


lost horizon

by Welcoming_Disaster



Category: Captain America (Movies), Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Fix-It, Major Character Injury, Minor Character Death, Multi, Time Travel, Winter Soldier Trauma Umbrella, characters will be tagged as they appear, mash up of comics and movie canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-14
Updated: 2019-01-09
Packaged: 2019-09-18 00:25:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 26,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16984638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Welcoming_Disaster/pseuds/Welcoming_Disaster
Summary: After the war is lost on a Wakandan battlefield, Steve Rogers wakes up in a New York S.H.I.E.L.D facility in 2012.





	1. prologue

Steve’s hands were still covered in, God, in the ashes when it happened. It wasn’t that he hadn’t had time to wipe it off. Someone passed by him, already, several someones. One of them had even put a hand on his shoulder, said something about gathering the remaining troops. He needed to go -- find out what happened to Sam, to Natasha, to the rest of the team, but he couldn’t force himself to start moving. He was light-headed, nauseous.

If he started moving now, he thought, he was going to vomit. If he started moving now, started reacting to it, then–- then the whole thing happened. 

Then they lost.

Then Bucky’s-- and God knows who else, but-- 

Through all of it, since the time the mask came off, Steve hadn’t been able to let go of the thought that they were going to figure things out, somehow. It didn’t end neatly when it could, with Bucky in the mountains and him in the sea and Peggy with a bright future ahead of her, the lines of their lives at their logical conclusions -- how could it end here, after so many million to one chances, due to something as arbitrary as a coin toss? 

The implications rolled over Steve in waves. Familiar, bone-deep loneliness; righteous fury, more tired than it had ever been before; grief, familiar and new, grief for an almost, for a thousand missed opportunities; guilt, guilt so overwhelming he couldn’t breathe, because he should have done more, tried harder, along every step of the way; anger, helplessness, and God, the unfairness of it all-- 

Steve closed his eyes and willed himself calm. He was spiraling. There was nothing to be done. He could feel rough, uneven grains on his fingers, and dry, soft ash. He could hear everyone around him, hushed voices, grunts of pain, sobs, here and there. He could smell the soot, so much of it, and the blood, and-- 

\--and perfume, a fruity smell, with a sweet tang to it like nothing women wore anymore, something he remembered from his childhood, but not quite right, so sweet it was almost rotting, too ripe. Someone was touching him again, a smaller hand on his own, the skin room-temperature and too-smooth. 

“It’s time to go,” Wanda said, calm and absolute. Vision, Steve remembered. He had to think of all of them, think of something that could comfort her, help, somehow, but he couldn’t muster up the energy. She didn’t sound like she was grieving. Unlike her to hide her emotions so well, especially from him. 

“I’m coming,” Steve rasped. There was a sick taste in his mouth, something like blood mixed with bile. 

The hand pushed something between his clenched fingers; a shard of some sort, rock. It was warm, warmer than the fingers, and awfully sharp. 

“Be careful,” Wanda replied. She sounded too old. Her voice was unaccented. Or, no, she was speaking with an accent, but it wasn’t Sokovian. Brooklyn, old Brooklyn, an accent he hadn’t heard in years, not properly. “This is bigger than you. You’re going to have to choose wisely.” 

Steve opened his eyes, but he couldn’t get a glimpse of her. He woke up. 


	2. lie to me

Steve was lying on his back. His fingers were cold. He could feel air currents on his face, an old-fashioned ceiling fan above him. A gentle breeze came through the window, along with faraway voices, the sounds of cars honking, a dog’s bark, and, closer, the radio, _“Curveball, high and outside for ball one. So the Dodgers are tied, 4-4…”_

Hesitantly, Steve sat up. The game. 1941. May. Old vacuum tube radio, likely hiding a modern microphone underneath the shell, judging the quality of the sound. The room, one bed, vague smell of disinfectant, nothing like the hospitals he had grown up in.

The door opened. “Good morning,” said the S.H.I.E.L.D agent in the nurse’s uniform, “or, should I said, afternoon?”

Steve stared at her. He remembered the illusion Wanda gave him ages ago, the ballroom, Peggy, but--

\--no, that wasn’t it. There was no dreamlike quality to this. He could feel individual fibers of the bedspread under his fingers, could smell the room in layers (disinfectant, fresh air from the open window, paint -- they must have thrown this together very quickly), could make out details of the room he would have never remembered the first time around. He closed his eyes, took ten seconds. The room was still there when he opened them.

“Captain Rogers?” Prodded the agent, clearly concerned, “this must come as a shock to you, but you’re in a recovery room in New York City and you are--”

“...dead, is that it,” Steve ground out.

That caught her off guard, though only for a moment. “No! No, Captain Rogers, I understand this is a shock, but… you’ve just been asleep for quite a long while, under the ice…”

“You going to stand there and tell me it’s the year of our Lord 2010?”

Steve was good at microexpressions, could parse out and sketch even Natasha’s subtle widening of the eyes, the brief quirk of the mouth, the way her forehead could wrinkle for just a moment before it flattened out again. And this agent, whoever she was, was no match for Natasha’s poker face; Steve registered her unmanufactured surprise.

She settled on, “...something like that,” and Steve pretended to listen to her fumbling explanations while he considered the possibility that he might actually, seriously be there.

What did that mean? Some kind of simulation, which restarted after he had messed everything up the first time? But to what end? The real world, time travel, like what Strange had done? But how, why now, why him?

Steve ran a hand over his face and considered his course of action. Until something told him otherwise, he would act on the assumption this was actually happening; there was no going back if he blew it off and it turned out to be real. Two things were most important, then. The first was Hydra (Bucky), the infiltration (Bucky), Project Insight (Bucky, god, he can get him out two years earlier, prevent the whole fight). The second was the stones. At least two, Steve knew, would be within his reach soon. The Tesseract should have surfaced with him now, and Loki would be coming with his scepter in a matter of weeks, if not days. He needed to destroy them. At least one, he hoped, would be enough, but he didn’t think it was safe to stop there, especially if the time stone remained.

He glanced back up at the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. She was still talking, edging around the issue, something about technology or medical care. He didn’t have a second to waste. Tesseract, Hydra, Loki’s stone, Strange, _Bucky_. The only way to the Tesseract was through Fury. And Hydra-- well, if anything, now, he was in Hydra’s hands, unarmed, alone, and with no real way to tell who was S.H.I.E.L.D. and who was Hydra.

“Excuse me,” he said, standing. He couldn’t lock his knees, now, barely stopped himself from bouncing on the balls of his feet; he had a plan, he had a way, and he had to get _moving_ , “that’s all very nice. Could I speak to whoever’s in charge, please?”

It was only later that he realized how that must have come off. The woman must have expected it, though; she nodded and gestured for him to stand up. “I have to warn you, outside might be a little jarring,” she said, “despite the way we put this room together, you’re in one of the most high tech facilities in the United States, and, well, technology has come a long way since you would have last seen it.”

“Yeah, and you’d think, in this absolute paragon of progress, you would have the means to figure out not to put on a game from ‘41, find a photograph of a hospital room before you build one, or _close the goddamn window,_ ” Steve couldn’t help it-- he was sick of this, whatever this was.  “I’m not going to have a heart attack when I see your iph-- _flying cars_.”

He stepped behind her, pushing the doors open. The agents that had charged him the first time let him through easily enough, and, though she didn’t look happy, the one in the nurse’s outfit followed behind him.

Steve oriented himself quickly; his spatial memory rarely failed him. His memory rarely failed him, period. He knew how to find Fury’s office, but, judging by how quickly Fury turned up last time, he could expect him to be close by.

He didn’t have to go far; they had some kind of observation room set up, the doors open, just down the hallway. Steve scanned through the people, making more of a show of it than he needed to; he thought, from the way Fury loomed over the others, that anyone would be able to tell he was in charge.

He was always awkward at things like this, could barely muster up faked surprise in front of friends, but no one here knew him or had any reason to suspect him. He’d have to bank on them thinking him odd, rather than fake.

“Steve Rogers, sir,” he said, holding out a hand, “you the guy that pulled me out?”

Fury looked him in the eyes, holding it long, clearly trying to read him. _Good luck, old man,_ Steve thought, just a little bitterly, _I’m the one with the secrets now._

Or, more accurately: _Good luck. I’m the old man with the secrets now._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big thanks to 3to40characters_nospaces for giving these first few chapters a read over as I was writing them. I hope you enjoyed reading them, too! I have the next couple written as well and they should be posted soon.  
> If you liked this, keep in mind that I'd sell my firstborn for comments & kudos ;)


	3. i wanna live in xanadu

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IMPORTANT NOTE: I do not respect Clint Barton's MCU characterization. The Clint Barton in this fic is the Clint Barton from Matt Fraction's 2012 run of Hawkeye.  
> It's probably my favorite Marvel comic, period, and if you haven't read it, you should check it out. The bottom line is, though, that the whole "family on a farm" thing is not going to happen in this fic.

Fury’s handshake was firm, like it had been the first time. Steve met his eyes, gave a tight smile. “You seem to be feeling well, Cap,” Fury commented, “Nick Fury. Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“Well, it’s good to know we won,” Steve remarked, curtly. “It’s good to know the Nazis are gone, and Hydra with them.”

Fury raised an eyebrow, something like dry amusement, or satisfaction. This early in the game, Steve thought, he didn’t know. He didn’t even suspect. “It’s an honor to meet you, Captain.”

“Likewise. I have to ask, though-- when I crashed the plane, there was a cube on board. Big, ugly, blue thing. You happen to come across that?”

Surprise, the tiniest sliver. Steve hadn’t said anything about it, last time. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Well, then. Not unlike Fury to lie to his face.

“Alright, well. If you do, you need to be careful with it. Real careful. It’s volatile, unpredictable. The things I saw it do,” and here, Steve was stretching, but he paused, as though to think about it, “...honestly, Director Fury, it’d be better if you destroyed it. This isn’t something we can make anything good out of. Hydra tried, and— well, it didn’t go well.”

“Duly noted, Captain.”

“I’m being serious here.”

“Like I said, Cap. Duly noted, if we ever find the thing.”

There was a long, tense silence. Fury broke it first, “how about we move on, here? This is all happening very fast for you. What do you think comes next?”

“You’re asking if I want to pick up the shield.” The first time they had this conversation, Steve hadn’t given any kind of real answer to that. Back then, things had been happening too fast. Steve had mourned. Steve had been angry. Now, he thought it must seem a little inhuman, how calm he was, but he couldn’t muster up the energy to fake it. It’d hit too close to home, tap too far into the bone-deep exhaustion he’d been feeling the past months. Hopefully, Fury would write off his poker face as shock.

“Precisely.” Fury stared him down.

“Well, I’m not going to let a little ice keep me out of the good fight, if that’s what you’re asking,” Steve straightened up, gave the trademark patriotic half smile, even started to raise his hand to salute before he thought better of it, “point me to the fight, Director.”

“I think we’re going to get along very well, after all, Captain,” Fury said.

Steve felt the fakest he could ever remember feeling.

The first time around, Steve didn’t notice how slowly everything moved when S.H.I.E.L.D. got him set up. They walked him painstakingly through basics like microwaves and dishwashers, talked for too long about inflation, and seemed to think he needed driving lessons (okay, the first time around, he kind of had). He blew through it all impatiently, trying to keep up appearances the whole while. He was maniac, constantly feeling like a cornered rat, like he was on his last wild adrenaline rush.

The first night of the orientation he laid awake until sunrise, worrying where Bucky was and how he was feeling -- was he in the ice? Out on a mission? Or-- Steve didn’t want to think about it, but every moment he stared at the ceiling on his too-soft bed could be a moment that Bucky spent on that goddamn machine, screaming, in pain.

The only time Steve slowed down was when they explained credit cards to him. He sat, took notes diligently, nodded at the right times and asked, opening his eyes real wide, “so, does the machine give you a new one every time?” and, “how does all that money fit inside of it?” and, “but why can’t I use one of those chips-and-Snickers machines to get money off it?”

It only took forty-five minutes until they handed him far too much in cash instead. Natasha would have been proud.

God, he missed Natasha. He wondered, often, what happened to her, in the future-slash-real-world. Spent fifteen minutes between S.H.I.E.L.D.-mandated therapy sessions tossing a coin in his hand. Heads for she lived, tails she didn’t. Two out of three, then. Three out of five.

It was morbid, but she would understand.

That was the same day that they finally let him get home on his own. He was looking forward to putting the money to good use. In the elevator, though, he saw a familiar face.

“Hey,” Clint Barton said, squinting at him, “I think I know you. Hold on, don’t tell me. Aw, crap, you’re one of the STRIKE guys, aren’t you?”

Steve raised an eyebrow, grimly amused, and then shook his head. “Steve Rogers,” he said, holding out a hand.

“Ohhh,” Clint said, letting it hang in the air a little too long, “Captain America. Right. Clint Barton. I, um, I work here a lot of the time.”

“Codename: Hawkeye,” Steve said, because a little flattery never hurt and Clint was the kind of man he wanted on his side, “I’m a fan, actually.”

“Wow, shit, okay,” said Clint, “you seem like you’re adjusting fast. I’d offer to show you around, but I guess you must have gotten that a lot, lately.”

“No, I’d love to take you up on that. You live around here?”

“Yeah, Bedford-Stuyvesant. Brooklyn. I kind of own an apartment building? It’s a long story.”

The doors of the lift opened. Steve let Clint step ahead of him. “Just you?”

Clint shrugged, “sure. Me and my dog, Lucky. Do you like dogs?”

“I love dogs,” Steve said with enthusiasm he didn’t feel. “do you know anywhere good to eat around here? I could go for sushi.”

Clint frowned, clearly taken aback. It took Steve a second to realize what he said.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that. We weren’t savages.”

It shouldn’t have worked, but Steve knew Clint dropped out of school before he was done with middle school, to work full time in the circus; he was counting on Clint not having paid much attention during history class.

“Oh, huh,” said Clint, “well, the more you know. I know the best place, actually, very close to where I live…”

Steve smiled and followed him out. It turned out to be an oddly nice night; Clint wasn’t an open book by any standards, but he told good stories, knew a better sushi place than any Steve found before, and, in general, seemed to genuinely appreciate the company.

It was eleven at night before Steve started feeling guilty about being there. By thirty after, though, he couldn’t stop imagining Bucky strapped down to that awful chair, couldn’t stop trying to remember what had been recorded in the files for 2012. He needed to go.

They were back at Clint’s apartment, by then. Lucky, the dog, stretched out under Clint’s feet, and both of them were nursing cheap beers.

Steve leaned back, watching Clint. He was in the middle of a field story. Steve was pretty sure it heavily featured Natasha, though Clint never named any names; his descriptions of his partner ranged from “the girl I was with, you’ll meet her, she’s brilliant,” to “and this fucking lunatic, right, she pulls out a Molotov cocktail from goddamn nowhere.” It shed some light into the kind of work S.H.I.E.L.D. had done before he joined the first time around, though nothing Steve wouldn’t have guessed.

“...and that,” Clint finished, taking a sip of his beer, “is why I needed a fake ID to get into Italy again after that. Man, I’m still upset about the lions, though.”

“Sounds intense,” Steve said, mostly to prevent him from launching into another story.  “the whole job, I mean. You like it that way?”

“Guess I do, yeah. Though it’s boring just as often. Fury wants me down to watch that cube thing they pulled out with you this coming week. If it goes well, I’m gonna be sitting on my hands in the rafters for a long time.”

Steve closed his eyes, mentally counting down. He wasn’t sure, hadn’t kept track of the exact dates after he had first popped out, but it couldn’t long. “Be careful around that. It’s bad news.”

“What’re you worried about?” asked Clint.

“Oh, anything. Someone messes with it, you can never be sure what comes out.” Steve shrugged, finishing off his own drink, “or it could just blow.”

“Yeah, I think they’re worried about that. They’ve got it in New Mexico, near Alamogordo,” Clint said, “project P.E.G.A.S.U.S., big old hole in the ground. We always joke that if something’s gonna blow up, they do it there. Because of, y’know, the atomic bomb? It’s where the Trinity site was.”

There was a pregnant pause. Clint’s brain caught up with his mouth.

“Crap, sorry, that’s recent history for you, isn’t it…”

It surprised Steve himself when he started laughing, covering his face with a hand. It was a little hysterical, maybe, but it was better than the alternative, “no, you’re good, you’re good, that's -- it’s funny.”

He reached over, slapping Clint on the back. “I gotta get going. They’ve been scheduling these orientation sessions first thing in the morning. I’ll see you around, then?”

“Yeah, man, of course. Let me know if you need anything.”

Steve gave him a little mock salute, grabbed his jacket, and headed for the exit. All of the sudden, he felt he knew what he was doing; he had a where, and a rough when, and some idea of what had to happen.

He remembered the first battle with Loki, compared it to his training sessions with Thor, and came to one conclusion; his chances against the demigod, alone, weren’t favorable. Without the scepter, perhaps, but this wasn’t the time to think about his dignity.

He needed another player on his team, someone strong enough to present a real threat to Loki, to hold their own. This left him with limited options; Banner could never be convinced to come down in time, they didn’t know Thor yet, and neither of the unmodified humans on the team would be enough. Selfishly, Steve wished for Bucky, but it wasn’t the time to dwell, either.

No, it was time to play nice with Tony Stark.


	4. (without you)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are some depictions of violence in this chapter that are fairly canon-typical.

As he came out of the elevator of the Stark tower, Steve found he was struck by one thought: Tony looked so much younger than Steve remembered him. It was funny -- everyone was younger, but it was so much more obvious here. The set of his shoulders, the lines of his face, the way he carried himself -- it all spoke of a different man than the one Steve remembered. More arrogant, perhaps, beaten down in different ways, sure of every decision he was making. Easier to understand, harder to deal with.

He wasn’t missing the Tony he knew, not exactly, but it was a close thing.

“Steve Rogers,” he said, holding out a hand, “thanks again for meeting with me. I heard great things.”

“You know, so did I,” Tony’s eyes were narrow, “shorter than I thought you would be, from the way my dad talked.”

Steve pursed his lips, not for the first time feeling the urge to posthumously shake some sense into Howard Stark. They were still standing in the hallway in front of the elevator. Steve took a liberty and let himself into a small, private lobby, taking a seat on one of the couches.

“Your father was a great man,” he said, carefully. As much as he hated sucking up to Tony Stark, of all people, a fight was the last thing he could afford to waste time and energy on, “from what I found out about what you’re doing, it sounds like he would have been proud. I couldn’t help but notice, though, that you’re not particularly involved with S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“This some kind of recruitment speech? You can spare me, boy scout. You don’t get what’s going on, here--”

“No, no,” Steve raised both hands up, placating, “I want to know if I can trust them. That’s all.”

It caught Tony off guard. He took a step forward, leaning his elbows on the back of an armchair, “and you went here?”

“The Stark name is something I’m familiar with, at least. I trusted Howard; I can extend the same trust to you. I want to know what you know about S.H.I.E.L.D.” He paused, for dramatic effect, “they’ve been setting me on guard.”

“Well,” said Tony, sliding into the chair across from where Steve was sitting, “Now, _I_ want to know what _you_ know about S.H.I.E.L.D.”

Steve smiled. “It starts,” he said, “with this blue cube. I actually thought they might have contacted you about it. They don’t get how to it works, or why, but it’s basically, er,” he paused, probably appearing like he was struggling to describe it; really, he was wondering what words he could use that would sound believable coming out of his mouth, “an infinite energy generator, or something like that. Hydra used it during the war.”

“I didn’t get a call,” Tony said, leaning forward, his chin balanced on his folded hands. Hook, line, and sinker; Steve was amazed by how easy it was to manipulate Tony, especially this Tony. “But now, Capsicle, you’ve got my undivided attention.”

“I think they’re going to have a disaster on their hands,” Steve said, now letting a little bit of honesty shine through, “they’re starting tests on it this week. Honestly, I just don’t want to be pulling the civilians out alone when that thing blows. I hear you got a swell suit and I’m going to hazard a guess and say you don’t like being left out of scientific discovery.”

Tony smiled, clapping his hands together, “you know, star-spangled, I think you and I are going to get along real well.”

* * *

 

Tony invited him to his lab, showing off the Iron Man suit (“yeah, cool’s one word for it,”) and gesturing for him to sit down on one of the stools.

“Let’s see what S.H.I.E.L.D.’s hiding, then,” he said, pulling up several holographic screens at once.

“What do you mean?” Steve asked.

“I mean, I’m hacking my way in. Long overdue, anyway.”

Steve could barely contain a smile, but knew he had to keep up appearances, “it was 1945 two weeks ago.”

“Ah, well. You can say I’m intercepting their carrier pigeons.”

“You know, we actually did use those.”

“Of course I know, that’s why I said it.”

It only took a couple hours for Tony to get in. Steve wandered off to “explore” twenty minutes in. The tower was different than he remembered it; he found he kept expecting to run into Banner in the labs or catch a glimpse of Barton in the ceiling, find some remnants of the time it had spent as the Avengers tower. He’d missed the ugly thing, really, and he found himself as surprised by that as by anything else.

He had no doubt he was being watched, though, so he didn’t let himself linger. Instead, he made himself stare a little too long at the menu of the Starbucks on level 8 before ordering his normal drink with two extra shots of espresso.

“That kind of day, huh?” Asked the young woman in line behind him, a vaguely familiar face he couldn’t put a name to.

“That kind of couple months,” Steve replied, giving her a quick, tight smile.

He turned back to the lab after that. Tony barely glanced up from his work when he entered. “See you’ve discovered iced coffee.”

“It’s very sweet,” Steve said, drily, taking a long drink, “you got anything for me to do?”

“Did you know you were followed over?” Tony asked, “S.H.I.E.L.D.’s keeping tabs on you.”

“I’m not surprised,” Steve said, “though I don’t think I’m outside my right to meet the son of an old friend.”

“Hm. Did they give you your shield back?”

“Yeah, I’ve got it back home.” He had insisted.

“Might want to go fetch that. You know, ‘cos I’d love a look at dear old dad’s work and everything.”

Steve smiled. “I’m guessing I was right?”

“I tracked down your cube. The readings are already all over the place; I’m guessing we’ve got maybe six to eight hours before the elves give in and give old Saint Nick a call. That’s your cue to laugh, by the way -- I’m keeping my references time-appropriate.”

Steve rolled his eyes. He took a taxi home and back, ignoring the look he got from the driver when he crammed his shield into the backseat.

Steve had been worried that Fury would already be in New Mexico, by then, but as it turned out, he’d stayed in New York. Tony intercepted the distress call; they would be there at approximately the same time.

They were on one of Tony’s planes, with the suit on board and ready to go, before long. Steve was content to let him prattle on, keeping mostly quiet himself. With Tony, the occasional nod or “uh-huh” went pretty far, and he knew he had to watch what he said; Tony was the kind of person who could, theoretically, notice Steve knowing something he shouldn’t have.

Besides, he was busy calculating exactly what they would be up against when they arrived. The first time they ran into Loki, the two of them together were more than enough to take him down; Steve didn’t see why that should change. His biggest worry was Barton, whose mind-controlled state they would hopefully have to prevent, and their ability to recover the Tesseract. S.H.I.E.L.D. had shown that they were not to be trusted, over and over again, but Steve didn’t want to burn any bridges before he had the chance to cross them.

“Closest place to land is still a twenty-minute drive away,” Tony commented, as they approached the P.E.G.A.S.U.S. facility. He had his suit mostly on, missing only the arm plates, and was standing by the windows, “looks like Fury just arrived five minutes ago, though. I think we’re good on time--”

Suddenly, the entire facility it up, bright blue light streaming out through the windowless walls and roof. Steve took a step forward, peering over Tony’s shoulder, “yeah, I think we have to rethink that plan.”

Tony clicked his tongue, “hope you’re not scared of heights, Cap. Grab your frisbee.”

He’d flown with Tony so many times before that Steve barely even felt their rapid descent; if anything, the cold, biting air on his face made him feel more alive than he could remember in the past several weeks. There was nothing like the push of it against his skin to make his body throb, to get his blood pumping.

It was the part where they crashed through the steel roof that got him a little shaken up.

Down below them, several feet below, he could see the scene that was unfolding; guards, at least a dozen of them, were crumbled on the ground. Loki had Clint Barton by the collar, the scepter pressed to his chest. Behind them, Fury was scurrying away, towards the Tesseract.

Loki glanced up at them as they descended, and whipped around, letting go of Clint (Steve didn’t miss, though, that Clint’s eyes seemed to be glowing a pale, unearthly blue), and fired a bolt of energy in their direction.

Tony just barely got out of the way, dropping Steve, who fell the remaining fifteen feet and rolled, feeling the impact travel up his legs. “Get his spear!” He shouted, chucking his shield at Loki. He deflected using the scepter-- when Steve caught his shield again, it was hot to the touch.

Fury, Steve noticed, out of the corner of his eye, now had the Tesseract in his hands. Loki, Steve thought, must have noticed, too, but he did his best to keep him distracted, throwing the shield again. It hit him square in the shoulder, sending him reeling.

“Thanks, Captain Obvious,” Tony quipped back, voice slightly muffled by the suit. He ducked another burst of energy from the scepter and shot back with his own repulsors. Loki rolled away and shouted something out to Clint that Steve could not make out.

As Steve dove for his shield again, just a few feet off to the side, Clint pulled his gun, robotically, and, not for the first in his long life, Steve saw Nick Fury’s brain splatter all over the concrete floor.

A blast from Tony’s repulsors knocked Loki onto the ground, sending the scepter spiraling away from them. Clint turned his gun in a different direction.

Steve grabbed his shield and threw it more softly than he was used to, counting on the slowed momentum of its backward spin. Clint Barton crumbled to the ground and didn’t get up again.

Steve caught the shield, used the same movement to chuck it at Loki’s back, driving him down as he tried to stand.

“Go for the spear!” Tony shouted, diving for Loki.

“This whole place is about to blow!” Shouted someone behind them, perhaps one of the scientists. “You’ve got maybe a minute before the portal goes critical!”

“Cap!” Tony yelled, again. He had Loki on the ground, now, was holding him down.

“I’m on it!” Steve yelled back, tossing his shield aside for the scepter.

It was so hot he almost dropped it, but adjusted, aiming and giving it an experimental shake. The whole building rumbled, and he sure he messed up, now, but then the portal shook and collapsed on itself. He dropped the scepter and stumbled, nearly losing his balance. Every nerve in his hand burned; he looked down and saw blisters spanning the entirety of his palm, climbing down his fingers. Second degree.

Tony had a knee between Loki’s shoulder blades, pressing his face down onto the concrete. Steve could hear his heavy breathing through the facemask of the suit. “Need a hand?”

“No, I got him. Check on…” He gestured expansively.

“Yep.” Steve knelt by Fury’s body. He couldn’t feel a pulse, and a cursory look at the wound told him there was no way Fury could have survived it. He wasn’t sure what to make of that; Fury had been shot the first time, too, and then two years later, by Bucky. Steve would be surprised if he didn’t have a trick up his sleeve.

Clint, on the other hand, was breathing. Steve could see the exact place where the shield hit him, a long, shallow cut from its sharp edge, the skin around it one big bruise. Blood pooled on the floor around him, as Steve would have expected from a head wound.

“Hey, Barton,” Steve said, snapping his fingers in front of his face several times. No response. “Clint. Hey.”

“You know that guy?” Tony piped up, sounding surprised.

“Yeah,” Steve said, flatly, “we had sushi.”

Several other agents, from which Steve recognized Coulson and Hill, were picking themselves up, approaching Tony where he had wrestled Loki to the ground. Now that strength had failed him, the god was talking, droning on about something or other irrelevant.

Steve knew better than to try to move someone with a head wound, but one of Loki’s energy blasts had broken most of the supports of the structure above them. Grudgingly, he pulled Clint’s limp, surprisingly light body out of the rumble, splattering blood on his S.H.I.E.L.D.-provided t-shirt and jacket. This hadn’t happened the first time around.

The first time around, Natasha had punched him out, and then Clint had gotten right back up again and taken their side. Continued to take Steve’s side, after that, even when it cost him dearly. _I did this,_ Steve thought, almost numbly. He’d rushed in there, changed the way things were supposed to go; he had thrown his shield, fooling himself into thinking the projectile weapon could be _soft_. He was supposed to have control of the situation, and--

Well, he had controlled it, alright.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> again, a ton of thanks to 3to40characters_nospaces for looking this over!  
> I feel like I'm publishing too fast but I'm super excited about this fic. If you liked this, consider dropping a comment or a kudo! ;)


	5. all the guys gone

Tony and several agents made their way to the door, dragging Loki. Scientists filled out behind them, pale-faced and shaking. Maria Hill bent down by Fury’s body, blank-faced, and pressed two fingers to his neck. 

“Sir?” She asked, quietly. 

Considering that Steve could see most of the contents of his cranium on the concrete around him, he thought that it was uncharacteristically optimistic of her. He watched her carefully; it was likely she knew something he didn’t. 

But she only straightened back up and went for the door. Her face was still blank when she passed him, but now it was a forced sort of blankness, a lack of statement being a statement itself. She gave him a curt nod as she passed.

Phil Coulson paused by the body, too, several emotions written on his face at once. Finally, he gave a short nod, too, this one to the dead man in front of him. 

“It was an honor, Boss,” he said, and Steve knew Fury was dead. 

Hands in his pockets, head bowed low, Coulson followed the rest of the procession out of the room. 

Still carrying Clint, Steve was the last one out. He needed a medical bay, or at least a first aid kit. ‘Put pressure on the wound’ was always his first step to dealing with things like this, but he knew he had to be more careful with a head wound; an infection would be even more dangerous than blood loss. 

His right hand, which he had used to pick up the scepter, throbbed.

Tony and the others pulled Loki into another underground room and didn’t need his help to wrestle him into handcuffs. Hill wordlessly waved for Steve to follow her into a smaller conference room.

“You can put him down on the table,” she said, producing another pair of handcuffs from her belt, “thanks for getting him. I mean that, er, in both ways I could mean it right now, I suppose.” 

“You sure those are necessary?” Steve asked, glancing down at the cuffs. He didn’t even notice stepping in between Hill and table, but he found he was now firmly blocking her way. 

Hill gave him a long look, her exasperation written in every line of her face, “Rogers, he shot Nick. He  _ killed  _ Nick.” 

“Loki did something to him.” 

“Exactly. You don’t know if that’s still there or not.” 

“Look, he’s hurt. He dropped his gun, anyways.” 

She didn’t look impressed. “Do you even  _ know  _ him?” 

“I--” Steve remembered where ( _ when _ ) he was and stopped talking. Hill stared at him. He finished, lamely, “met him.” 

“Well, the first thing you  _ should  _ know about Clint Barton is that dropping his gun never makes him unarmed,” Hill replied, “and the other thing you should know, about the way we run things here, is that we don’t take any unnecessary risks. Would you get out of my way, please?” 

“Yeah, alright,” Steve said, stepping out of the way. Arguing about this was not going to get Barton medical help any faster, “sorry, I think I got… involved.” 

“Happens to all of us,” Hill said, absently. Steve could tell she was forming some sort of opinion about him, but he couldn’t tell what it was, “Maria Hill, by the way. Deputy Director.” 

“Yeah, I-- have never met you before,” Steve said, stumbling over his words, “I guess you know who I am, though.” 

“Yeah, I had the honor of poking your frozen body with a stick a couple weeks ago,” Hill said, as she handcuffed Barton’s hands together in front of him and pulled his shoes off, dislodging several knives, a gun, and some sort miniature explosive. “Give me a hand over here, big guy. I need to go back sure they’re alright with The Man Who Would Be King over in the next room, and then I’ve got, like, fifty phone calls to make.” 

“First aid kit?” Steve asked, trying to rein in his impatience. 

“Yep,” she pulled it out from underneath the table, sliding it over to him, “I’ll try to have someone with actual medical training in here at some point soon. Just get some pressure on that.” 

“I got you,” Steve said. He sanitized his hands, did his best to get Clint’s head and shoulders elevated, and went for the gauze. Hill pulled another gun from Clint’s belt and left. 

Steve wasn’t entirely sure how long he was in there for. It gave him time to think, that was for sure; he thought long and hard about what happened. It occurred to him, for the first time, exactly how delicate the circumstances that the Avengers had been formed by were. Fury, their biggest advocate, seemed to actually be gone for good. Banner would not be called (good for him, maybe, but maybe not). Clint -- well, Steve just hoped he recovered. 

How many times had the team just narrowly escaped a deadly wound or destruction as a whole? How much more could Steve fuck up playing with their lives the way he was? 

No, he decided then and there, he wasn’t going to try to recruit anyone he didn’t have to. He wasn’t searching for Sam, or Natasha, or any of the allies of his former life. Tony, it seemed, was going to be on his side. He would get Bucky out. Everyone else, he was firmly planning to let go of. He couldn’t afford to get them killed, too. 

And damn, if that thought didn’t hurt. He had felt the same when he went to visit Peggy for the first time. She was still there, back then, but sometimes Steve thought it might have been easier if she wasn’t. 

Clint stirred, then, interrupting Steve’s gloom, and blinked open two perfectly normal grey eyes. Steve didn’t let him sit up. Considering the way that the shield must have hit, how his head would have snapped back, chances of a spinal injury were pretty high. 

“Fuck,” Clint said, quite aptly, and turned over on his side to spit out a mouthful of blood. 

“You’re okay,” Steve lied, glancing at the door. No one was coming; he hoped they were okay out there. “We got Loki, everything’s alright.” 

“I shot--” Clint started, but he didn’t finish his sentence before he was puking. 

Steve was just glad he had woken up first. Back -- oh, God knew how long ago-- during the war, Morita had taken a pretty hard hit to the head, and he started throwing up without even getting conscious first. While they got him through it, Steve still sometimes had nightmares about choking on vomit. 

He wished Clint knew him better. It couldn’t be that comforting, waking up handcuffed on a flimsy plastic table with a near stranger holding bloody gauze to his head. He tried to keep talking reassuring bullshit, not particularly keeping track of his words. It didn’t seem to be making a difference one way or the other, at first, but then he noticed all of Clint’s attention was on him, his expression intent and unreadable.

The door opened. Steve was pleasantly surprised to see Hill sent three or four S.H.I.E.L.D. paramedics, one of whom he recognized. It was another matter entirely that, by his estimation, it had taken them at least twenty minutes to get there. 

Through the now-open door, he could Tony, Iron Man suit still on, arms crossed on his chest, leaning against the wall in the hallway. Steve rattled off everything that happened with Clint, handed him off to the paramedics, and, reluctantly, went to join him. 

“Ah, there you are, Cap,” Tony lifted his faceplate, grinning over at him, “you ready to quit playing sexy nurse, confiscate their toys, and get the hell out of dodge?” 

“Yeah, suppose I am,” Steve said, his voice flat, “long as you’re sure they won’t need any help back here. Seems to be a mess.” 

“Hill called in the cavalry. They’re got Spiky downstairs --you can go  _ further  _ downstairs, here, they’re basically mole people-- and that place is meant to either hold Bruce Banner or an atomic bomb, not sure. Hill called in the cavalry. So, I say it’s time for us to go,” here, Tony started crooning, ridiculously off-key, “time we were on our way. For now I smell the rain, and with it pain, and it’s coming our wa-a-y--” 

“Thank you, Tony, that’s beautiful,” Steve interrupted, struggling to remember a time when he did not feel done with Tony Stark’s shit, “is your plane coming for us?” 

“Coming in the same way we went out,” Tony confirmed, “what happened to your hand?” 

“Loki’s staff burned me,” Steve said, raising his hand to show him, “it was all blistered, it’s a little better now. Burns don’t last long. For me. The blood’s not mine.” 

“Yeah, I’ve got Jarvis looking it over. You heal quicker than I thought. You know, seventy years and no one ever recreated it. The serum, I mean, after you went down. People tried, spent their lives on it. Give me a vial of blood and a couple weeks, though, and…”

Steve couldn’t suppress a shudder. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.” 

“Yeah, tell that to the next asthmatic, arthritic, immunodeficient kid out there,” Tony said, sounding offended, “what, lucked out and don’t wanna share it?” 

“Lucked out,” Steve said, not bothering to hide the bitterness, “no one else did. They were trying back in my day, too.” 

Tony pushed open the door. Steve picked up his shield, first, a little sad to see it still laying on the ground where he had left it. He swore, he used to take better care of the thing. Now, though, when it caught the light, Steve could see the edge of it that was stained with Clint’s dried blood, dark crimson on patriotic candy apple red, and wasn’t that just fucking  _ apt.  _

He grabbed the scepter, too, from the ground next to it. It was cold, now, and it felt good to hold it against the fading blisters on his right hand. Tony went for the Tesseract. 

They didn’t speak, which got a little awkward when Tony picked him up.  

* * *

 

One time, several years ago and/or in the future, Steve and Natasha ordered Chinese food. Steve’s fortune cookie, when he cracked it open, contained the single phrase, “emotion is energy in motion,” and Natasha wouldn’t stop laughing about it for the next few days. Steve wasn’t sure he got it then.

He thought he did now. 

It started out normally enough. Steve’s gloom had followed him onto the plane, and back to the Stark tower. He still hadn’t changed his bloody shirt. 

Tony had buzzed around him, cracking jokes, making pop culture references. Steve knew it came down to him  _ not getting it,  _ rather than any malice, but couldn’t help his irritation. 

So he had spiraled. He knew what to expect, but he still spiraled. Tony had made some off-hand comment about opening up the Tesseract, maybe, or about what had made the Hydra weapons work in the first place, and Steve had informed him it was a shame he wasn’t going to get to find any of that out. 

Tony hadn’t taken well to that. And, well, here they were. 

“You’re kidding me, right? Seriously, please tell me this is some kind of  _ joke  _ because I--” 

“No,  _ you  _ tell  _ me  _ you’re joking! We’ve got alien technology with possibly ten million different uses, many of them humanitarian, which can actually change the world in a matter of years if we figure out how to put it to good use, and you want to throw it all away?” 

“No, I want you  _ to smash it to pieces _ . Stark, you just saw what this does. I’ve seen what this does. And your answer here is to bring it to your home, where you  _ live,  _ and do the exact same things that S.H.I.E.L.D. was just doing, that Hydra was just doing?” 

“Well, the difference here is that I know what the fuck I’m doing--” 

“Oh, yeah, compared to the absolute  _ morons  _ with degrees in astrophysics that S.H.I.E.L.D. hires, huh? Yeah, you’re so smart, congratulations, you’ve never made a mistake in your  _ life--”  _

“You know what I just did? I just took down a Norse God, basically by myself, while you smashed a guy’s head open and proceeded to cry about it for fifteen minutes. I think that if anyone here knows what they’re doing, it’s pretty clear who that’s gonna be. You can let yourself out of my  _ home,  _ where I  _ live. _ ” Tony went to grab for both of the objects on the table, but dropped the scepter quickly, with a yelp, “ow, what the  _ hell,  _ that’s so hot.” 

“No, it’s not.” 

“Hell do you mean, ‘no, it’s not,’ I just picked it up, it’s hot.” 

Steve wiggled his fingers on his right hand, still red and purple from the original burns, and grabbed the scepter, waving it around, “it’s cold. Normal, cold metal. I don’t know what point you’re trying to make, here, but I don’t even think I care anymore.” 

“Do you not feel pain? Is that what you’re trying to show me? Congrats, your nerves don’t work. Stop burning yourself.” 

Steve closed his eyes and mentally counted to three. It didn’t work. 

“Okay,  _ please  _ put that down, you’re freaking me out,” Tony said. If Steve was listening, he might have thought it genuine. 

Steve put the scepter down and held up his hand, showing off its unchanged state, “you gonna touch my hand tell me it’s hot, too?” 

“Actually, yeah, give your hand over here,” Tony grabbed him by the wrist, roughly, yanking him forward across the table, and pressed four fingers against his palm.

Steve wished he had some kind of recording device, or maybe even a full news crew, for what happened next; it was the kind of thing that only occurred once in a lifetime. 

“Shit,” said Tony Stark, “you’re right.” 

And didn’t that take all the wind out of Steve’s sails, “excuse me?” 

“Your hand’s cold.” 

“Thank you!” 

“No, as in, it’s actually cold. Like you were just holding a glass of ice tea or something.” 

“Yes, because I just held a cold metal weapon in my hand,” Steve closed his eyes, took three. It helped. “... it actually wasn’t cold to you, was it?” 

“No, what’d you think, that I was trying to prove a point?” 

“That’s exactly what I thought, actually.” He’d been trying to figure out exactly what that point had been. 

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Cap. No, but this is reacting to you specifically. Might be because you used it.” 

Natasha had used it, the first time around. Steve didn’t think this happened. Steve  _ really  _ didn’t think this had happened. “Yeah, maybe,” he said, noncommittally. “I don’t know if that’s a good thing.”

“We can find that out,” Tony said, “I’m  _ going  _ to find that out.” 

Steve took a moment to consider it. He had a few years, at least, before the stones would become a threat. He didn’t see a way, without telling Tony the truth, that he could convince him not to study them. Maybe he was right; something good  _ could  _ come of it, if they were destroyed in the end. 

The first time, Tony had used them to create Ultron. But hadn’t that stemmed, in part, from their inability to communicate and the way Tony isolated himself from the rest of the team? Wouldn’t it be better to take a milder position, stay on the same side, and keep an eye on things?

Steve took a deep breath. 

“Look, Stark. Tony. Can you be sane about this, right now? There are way too many variables -- they’re reacting to each other, they’re reacting to me, we don’t know what Loki did to them. There’s a lot of people here. I don’t want to risk them. Separate the stones, let them cool down. Figure out what you’re going to do after that.” 

“Right,” Tony said, dragging out his words, “no, that sounds reasonable. Quick question, though.” 

Steve blinked at him, “Yeah?” 

“What stones?” 

Steve opened his mouth to explain, not actually sure what would come out, but Jarvis’s familiar voice spoke up, saving him, “Sir, I hate to interrupt, but I have a phone call for you.” 

Tony rolled his eyes, “it can wait.” 

“It’s Maria Hill, sir. I’m afraid she’s very insistent.” 

Steve was fairly sure that both he and Tony made the exact same grimace at the exact same time. 


	6. my boat is sinking

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize if this shows up as posted twice or something. I was having some trouble posting this. Hope you enjoy anyways!

“Hill, how are things going over there?” Tony asked cheerfully as Hill’s frustrated face appeared on a holographic screen in front of them. “Gotta be swamped, with all the--”

“As a matter of fact, we are,” she interrupted, “I just spent an hour negotiating transfer of prisoners with an extraterrestrial entity.”

“Do you mean--”

“Loki’s older brother showed up to pick him. It’s funny, though, as swamped as we’ve been, we didn’t actually fail to notice two extremely dangerous artifacts going missing.”

“Sorry to hear that,” Tony said, “you wanna put up flyers, or--”

“Stark, I can see the Tesseract on the table behind you. You’re going to have to give that back.”

“Says who?”

Hill sighed. “Nick Fury,” she said, “had a plan. For both of you, and some others. He wanted to put together a team capable of taking down threats like Loki. He called it the Avengers Initiative. He imagined training you to work as the most efficient special ops team in the world, funding research into objects like the Tesseract, recruiting extraordinary and unorthodox people. All under S.H.I.E.L.D., with S.H.I.E.L.D.’s resources.”

“Oh,” Tony said, not missing a beat, “Nah, we’re good. Thanks.”

“Excuse me?”

“Let’s review what happened here. You guys fucked up, let out an alien god planning to destroy the earth, me and Grandpa Frisbee over here showed up and saved your asses --at least 85% me, by the way, 15% him, if I’m being generous-- and you want us to hand everything back to you and then tell us how to do things? We’re good. _Thanks_.”

“Hold on,” Steve put in, “let’s not be that quick, here. I’d bet there’s more than one alien out there. Might be nice to get some other people on board.”

“Through them? I’d rather screen my own talent.”

Steve felt a pang of grief, sudden and surprising, for the Avengers Initiative. “They’ve got good people working for them,” he insisted.

“Well, you can stick with them, or with me,” Tony shrugged, “I’m keeping the toys.”

“Tony--” Steve started, but he didn’t actually have much to say.

Maria Hill was watching him, now, a curious expression on her face. “I think we’ll talk separately, Captain Rogers. Mr. Stark, you should know that we’ll come to reclaim our property one way or another.”

She hung up, leaving her last words hanging. Tony didn’t seem particularly affected.

“Don’t tell me you trust S.H.I.E.L.D.,” He said, turning to face Steve.

“I don’t,” Steve said, running a hand over his face. “I really don’t. It’s just… a shame. I think this could be a good idea.”

“Well, what if we take it and run with it ourselves? A team of super friends, no need for S.H.I.E.L.D.,  do things how we wanna do them. We could use the tower, even.”

“Yeah, who would you invite?” Steve asked, allowing himself to entertain the thought experiment.

“Let’s see,” Tony said, “my friend, Rhodey, he’s almost as good in the suit as me. I’d send Bruce Banner an invite, you never know. Guy’s brilliant, and I’m a big fan of how he turns into a green rage monster sometimes. Might be able to get some S.H.I.E.L.D. rejects, even, or mutants who couldn’t play ball with the X-men. I heard Kid Omega got kicked off, sounds like the kind of guy I’d get along with. You and I are hot and cold --see what I did there?-- but I think we worked together well in the field.”

“Yeah,” Steve said, quashing down an overwhelming, inexplicable sadness, “yeah, that sounds… nice. I-- look, I’m sorry I yelled, Tony. I’d love to keep working with you.”

That caught Tony off guard, he could tell. He muttered something like, “don’t worry about it,” and then added, “yep,” which, as Steve had come to know, generally meant he was at least a little bit touched.

And that felt good. _You’re gonna be my friend for real this time around,_ Steve thought, _whether we like it or not._

He decided earlier that the stones could wait, safe with Tony. He’d leave them there, for now, and then figure out what he could do to destroy them.

What couldn’t wait, though, was Bucky.

After a moment of consideration, he said, “I think I might try to smooth things over with Hill. You said you intercepted their communications, right? How much of that did you get?”

“Oh, I’ve basically got all their files from the past decade. Why?”

“I just overheard some things that didn’t really make sense. You mind if I have a look through?”

“Knock yourself out. You know how to use the Starkbook?”

“Which one’s the Google button again?”

“There’s n-- you’re joking.”

“I’m joking. You give it to me, I’ll figure it out.”

Tony nodded, and Steve spent the next several hours pouring over S.H.I.E.L.D. files looking for clues. It was slim pickings; Steve remembered that every Hydra-related file Natasha had leaked had been encrypted to hell and back. It took him a long while to even get his hands on the Winter Soldier file.

She decrypted it for him herself. She was also the one who forced him to take breaks reading. The names and assignments hadn’t been the hard part, though there had been a few that knocked the breath right out of him (Howard Stark, Jim Morita, and Daniel Sousa, Peggy’s husband, had been on that list).

It was the rest of the file that made him nauseous to think about.

He didn’t pick up anything like that. S.H.I.E.L.D. wasn’t squeaky clean by any standards, but they also weren’t Hydra. He was close to giving up (or trying to follow S.T.R.I.K.E. around until something gave) when he caught it.

It was a small mention, scheduled for four days in the future. The language made it sound like a routine thing; ‘ _establish contact with former employee Carrie Eisenhower,_ ’ it said, along with the location, a small city in Colorado.

Steve’s memory rarely failed him. He remembered the name, remembered the list he had seen it on before.

In four days time, Bucky would be sent to kill Carrie Eisenhower, whoever she was. Steve would get there first.

“Thanks, Tony,” he said, standing, “I think I got what I needed. I’ll get out of your hair.”

“Sure,” said Tony, “I’ll see you around?”

“You can… give me your number? And then I can… call you? Any time? Or… send a message, with, um, the faces?” Steve said, doing his best to sound profoundly confused about the whole thing.

That actually coaxed a laugh out of Tony, who reached over to clap him on the shoulder. “You got it, champ. Though, you know, most people get me a drink first.”

* * *

 

Figuring out transportation was a little difficult. In the end, Steve was satisfied with the series of train tickets he obtained, set to leave in two days and arrive the night before Bucky, theoretically, would.

There were only two things to take care of. The first was a card. The second was getting an extra large cymbal case.

Steve didn’t believe in buying cards. Four dollars for a cheaply printed photo of a pug in a party hat and a cliche message was a rip-off even by 21st century standards, and he missed the care put into handwritten letters.

So he an art notebook, full of heavy, textured illustration board paper, and neatly tore the first page out, folding it in half. On the front, he drew a red-tailed hawk in flight, working from memory (he’d seen them several times, even above the city, when he was a child, and later out on the lakes, and increasingly less in the new century). He shaded the paper around it in blue, and wrote, in flowy, looping cursive, the kind that so often got mistaken for calligraphy these days, ‘ _Sorry about the head._ ’

He considered what to write on the inside of the card for some time, wavering between various levels of honesty. In the end, he settled on a single phrase, ‘( _and hitting you with my shield)’._ It wasn’t something he would write to a stranger, but he knew Clint’s sense of humor.

He called the single number S.H.I.E.L.D. gave him and was surprised to be given the information he wanted quickly and easily. Clint had been transferred to a S.H.I.E.L.D.-adjacent facility in New York, closer to home, by helicarrier, and he was stable. Steve didn’t even need to pass what he wanted along; they’d love to have him in.

The blame must have fallen on Stark, then, Steve thought. It sounded too good to be true. He took the metro over regardless, purchasing a bag of candy from a street vendor on the way.

When he got to the lobby, there was already someone there waiting for him.

She was dressed in black pants, boots, and a muted, navy blue turtleneck sweater.  Her hair fell down around her face in gelled curls. She was leaning against the wall in a way that should have been casual, relaxed, but all Steve thought when he saw her was that she looked tense. Primed for a fight, a slight tension in her shoulders, in the set of her jaw.

It took years for that to become visible to him. Once it was, though, Steve knew it to be a bad omen; the Black Widow was rarely uneasy without a good cause.

“You must be Steve Rogers,” she said, pleasantly, holding out a hand as he approached.

“Ma’am,” he nodded, doing his best to match her tone. Her hand was warm and her handshake neither loose nor firm, nothing memorable about it. “Are you with S.H.I.E.L.D.?”

“I am. Natasha Romanov. It’s nice to meet you.”

“The pleasure’s all mine.”

They started walking down the hallway. She put a hand on his elbow, fingers lingering just the tiniest bit too long, prodding just a little too hard, “I heard you boys ran into quite a bit of trouble down in New Mexico. We’re still sorting that one out.”

“Yeah, that was insane. Aliens, huh?” Steve forced a chuckle, “who would have thought?”

“About that, actually; would you mind giving your statement to me, just briefly, before we go any further here? It’s just a technicality, really, since you were there, and, technically, you still work for us.”

No, they were being far, far too nice. Hill had to be furious with him, right now; Steve wondered what the purpose of this was.

“Sure,” he said, “no problem.”

As he expected, there was a room already set up for them. Natasha let him sit first and sat down across the table from him, at the furthest possible spot.

“Just as a formality, could you please state your name and date of birth for the record?” Natasha asked.

“Rogers, Steven Grant. July 4th, 1918-- well, it’s in your records as July 4th, anyways.”

“And really?”

“April 22nd.” Steve shrugged, a ‘what can you do’ kind of gesture.

Natasha’s expression didn’t change. “Brilliant. Where are you from?”

“Here, I guess. New York City. Brooklyn.”

“And to clarify, Captain Rogers, you’re genetically enhanced, isn’t that correct?”

“Yeah, I am. It’s a result of the super soldier serum.”

“That’s right. Given to you in 1943 by Dr. Albert Erskine.”

Steve had to interrupt, there, “Abraham.”

“Excuse me?”

“Dr. Abraham Erskine, nor Albert. But yeah, 1943.”

“My mistake. Then, you served in the army until 1945, achieved the rank of Captain…” She ran through his history. Nothing else she said stuck out to Steve in particular. He didn’t remember this part of his first debrief with S.H.I.E.L.D., and wondered what they were getting from it.

In the end, she only asked him a few questions about the actual attack, focusing more on the circumstances under which he conspired with Tony Stark, his previous meeting with Clint Barton, and, of course, the fates of the stones.

“I think we’re done here,” she said, only maybe twenty minutes later, “thank you, Captain. I’ll show you out.”

“Can I ask about Clint Barton?” Steve asked, realizing exactly what had happened.

“You may. He’s stable, though it took some time to get him there. We’re still working to make sure all extraterrestrial influences are gone, as well.”

“Sure,” Steve said, “would it be alright if I stopped by?”

“He’s not in any kind of condition for visitors.”

“Are you sure? On the phone, they said it’d be alright...”

Natasha’s left hand balled up like she was getting ready to throw a punch. Her voice remained perfectly pleasant, “I’m sure, Captain Rogers. I think you’d better be on your way.”

“Of course. Do you know him?”

“We’ve worked together.”

“Can you pass these on?” He pulled out the candy and card, handing them to her.

She read through the front and inside of the card, raising a skeptical eyebrow.

“What?” He asked, trying not to sound defensive.

“Just seems like the kind of thing he would like,” Natasha said, a weird tone to her voice. Just a little horrified, maybe, or at the very least concerned. She bounced back quickly, though; Steve didn’t think he’d have noticed the shift if he wasn’t paying attention, “you like coffee-flavored chocolate?”

“Never had it, ma’am. Seemed fancy.”

“Well, I’m sure Agent Barton will appreciate these. Thank you again for dropping by.”

“Perhaps I’ll see you around,” Steve said.

“I’ll look forward to it,” Natasha replied. She wouldn’t be, Steve could tell.

And just like that, with more new questions than answers, he was dismissed. He reached up to rub at the bridge of his nose. Now, he decided, wasn’t the time to worry about the weird interview or Natasha. He had a mission.

He knew from experience that there was only one music store in New York City that would sell him a 34” cymbal case, so he returned to the metro. There, he forked over far too much cash and made a point of peeling Natasha’s bug off his elbow and sticking it to one of the drums on display.

One last stop, then, before he would be ready. At the public library, far away from where S.H.I.E.L.D. (or Tony Stark, for that matter) could think to track his devices, Steve looked up Carrie Eisenhower. He found pictures, a Twitter feed (he was amused to find that “#FuckStark” was one the more frequent hashtags she used), and a Facebook profile. All had been active until two months prior. Eisenhower had graduated from Brown with a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering almost six years prior and worked for two companies the names of which Steve vaguely recognized. The last the internet had heard of her, she had been based out of Washington, D.C., and her last employer wasn’t listed.

It fit a profile, alright; seemed like the kind of person S.H.I.E.L.D. would hire. Steve wondered what she had done two months ago that warranted a death sentence. The words “biomedical engineering,” as benign as they could be, left a bad taste in his mouth in relation to Hydra. For all he knew, she could be a former Hydra agent, rather than S.H.I.E.L.D., and he could be facing enemies on both sides.

Then again, she had done something right if she pissed them off enough they would want her dead.

It was going to be a tricky thing, Steve thought, stopping the greatest assassin in history without the use of deadly force. If he couldn’t snap Bucky out of the brainwashing in time, he would have to try to subdue and capture him.

And if that didn’t work--

Well. There was one last thing Steve could try, but he was determined not to let it come to that.


	7. above the mountains where the snow falls down

Steve was perhaps more acquainted with train rides than most people in the day and age he found himself in. The past few years, on the run, it was always in the cramped, crowded Eastern European train systems. Natasha had insisted they should only go during rush hour, when it was easier to get lost, so he got to experience the questionable pleasure of being pressed up against several sweaty people at once more often than anything else. 

There was one time, though, on a trip from Moscow to Saint Petersburg, when they had taken the overnight train. The three of them -- Natasha, Steve, and Sam -- had crammed themselves into the same two-person sleeping stall, unwilling to risk separating. After a brief scuffle, Steve had taken the floor, though Sam and Natasha insisted on throwing their suspiciously-stained blankets and thin pillows down to him. 

“You know, I’ve slept in far worse places before,” he’d grumbled, trying to hand them back, “Nat, your cold’s gonna come back.” 

“Well, I’m gonna get a lot more sick watching you put your face down on that floor, Jesus,” she’d replied, tossing her boots down and going for her dry shampoo, “I know they hadn’t invented germs yet in your day and age, Steve, but you should know better by now.” 

“I’ve put my face down in much worse places, too,” he’d responded. 

“Gross!” Sam had piped up from the top bunk, “I did  _ not  _ need to hear that, Cap.” 

Steve’s response at the time had been less than graceful. Later that night, though, he remembered lying awake, one of Natasha’s hands dangling down over his face, Sam’s snoring way louder than normal, and thinking that he really didn’t mind where he was right then. Things hadn’t been perfect, never were, but… well, if he’d thought, if he had to spend the next few years of his life on the run with those two assholes, well, he could do a whole lot worse. 

And now that was gone, too. 

The train to Colorado was roomy and comfortable. Steve thought he would sketch the changing landscape. Instead, he found himself copying down the soft lines of Natasha’s mouth, the shape of her eyes when she laughed. He drew Sam’s hands, powerful and gentle, doodled the face he’d made that one time Steve cooked cabbage for dinner. He drew the angled, fragile lines of Wanda’s body. 

He tried to draw Bucky, started with the eyes, the concerned tilt of his eyebrows, strands of hair tumbling in his face. He didn’t realize where he was going with it until he started adding on the sharp lines of the Winter Soldier mask. 

He couldn’t finish it. He flipped the page, and he drew Natasha dancing. 

And when he couldn’t stare at her face any longer, either, he closed the notebook and looked out the window. Deep New York greens gave way to the more rugged landscape of the plains. Passing through St. Louis, Steve pulled his notebook out again, wanting to get down the swoopy structures around them, but they turned into the lines of the wings of Sam’s suit, instead. 

He didn’t know where Sam was. Deployed, that was for sure, but he found he didn’t know exactly where, or if he still had Riley.

For a second, he entertained the thought of trying to save him, but… well, he already saw exactly how successful he was at controlling a situation he  _ knew.  _ Trying to enter an active war zone and stop the trajectory of a random bullet was stupid at best. 

No, Sam was strong and capable, and as much as it hurt, Steve would leave him alone. All he had ever done, anyway, was drag him into a fight he should have gotten to leave long ago. 

When he nodded off, face pressed up against the window, he dreamed of coming home. When he woke up, already in the wee hours of the morning, the train almost to Denver, he couldn’t remember exactly where home had been.

* * *

 

The town where Eisenhower was supposed to be found, Pagosa Springs, was a small, stretched out type of place. The landscape was breathtakingly beautiful, the green of the pines stark against the red rocks of the mountains. The air was crisp and fresh, smelling of pine needles. By the time that Steve arrived there, having to take a cab from the train station, it was dark, and Steve could see thousands of stars in the night sky above him, devoid of light pollution. The houses around him displayed an odd blend of Pueblo-style, adobe architecture and classic European log cabins.  

It was a tourist hot spot; people vacationed in the cabins in the nearby mountains and ventured down to the town to buy postcards and trinkets. A sign listed the population as 1,700.

It was a classic beginner’s mistake, Steve knew, running to small places like this one. Really, anonymity could only be found off the grid and in huge crowds. A small town, however, could provide the illusion of safety while leaving one on display to someone who knew how to look. 

There were only so many places one could go, that was what it came down to. Steve rented a room in the cheapest motel in town, leaving his duffel bag there for the time being. He was about to leave shield, still in the cymbal case, but thought better of it. Better to have it than not, even if it drew some weird looks. 

He dropped by every bar in town, quickly scanning the faces. Eisenhower was nowhere to be found, but he hadn’t pegged her as the type, anyway. By his estimation, he had at least twelve hours before anyone Hydra would come to town.  If his memory served, the original murder had occurred a day after that. 

In the morning, he would search coffee shops, and, if that failed, move on to asking the locals about anyone new turning up. If that failed, too… well, he wouldn’t miss the Winter Soldier. 

Now, though, it was getting late. Steve scoped out the town, taking stock of any potential secluded spots and wondering where the Hydra team would stay, once they were in town. He didn’t think he could sleep that night, with Bucky potentially so close, with so much on the line so soon. 

He registered movement in the corner of his eyes when he entered the motel, someone walking behind him. He was about to turn back and look when a female voice called, “Hey! You percussion?”

He turned to face her and struggled to hide his surprise. His luck, he thought, might just be turning. 

“No,” he said, playing it cool. “I just like feeling like a turtle. Steve.” 

“Hm, that’s funny. Carrie. I played banjo in a folk rock band for years.” She was a short, small, freckled woman, dressed in a t-shirt which depicted a modified version of the evolution of man (monkey, ape, neanderthal, modern man, centaur). She’d dyed her hair since the pictures Steve had seen online, but, other than that, remained almost completely unchanged. There could be no mistake, Steve thought, about who he was looking at.

“Sounds swell,” he said, noncommittally. 

“Oh, no, we were horrible.” 

“I’m sure you were fine--” 

“No, no, no, totally horrible. I’m telling you, our first single was called ‘Babe Lincoln’s Funny Bone.’ We used both a violin and an accordion for the instrumental bits.” 

Steve huffed out a laugh. This conversation was not going the way he expected it to. He could try to act normal, follow her, and wait until Hydra’s men arrived… or, maybe, “well, I’ll stand corrected. But, um, actually, Carrie. Dr. Eisenhower. I knew who you were. I was looking for you, actually…” 

She went pale, took a step back, reaching into her pocket for something. Steve raised his hands, showing his empty palms. 

“I was looking for you,” he said, “because someone’s going to try to kill you tomorrow.” 

She stared at him, pale and shaking a little, but then dropped whatever she had reached for back in her pocket. “Don’t try  _ anything. _ Tell me how you know that.”

“Alright,” Steve said, noting the inexperience; if he had done this to a trained S.H.I.E.L.D. (or Hydra) agent, he was sure they wouldn’t be dropping their weapon so quickly. Not to mention that he could see the outline of it through her pocket; as far as he could tell, it was a can of pepper spray, “some files that I shouldn’t have seen. You sure you want to do this out in the open? I don’t think anyone’s here, yet, but…” 

“Fair enough. My room, not yours.” 

“Of course.” Steve tried to give her a reassuring smile. She stared at him like he was insane, so he dropped it. 

Her room was quite lived in, but it seemed like she was ready to run at a moment’s notice. A suitcase was open, but not totally unpacked in the middle of the room. The trash was full of quick meals and take out boxes. Two unopened boxes containing prepaid burner cells were lying on the desk. 

Definitely on the run, and definitely for the first time. 

“Did you used to work for S.H.I.E.L.D.?” Steve asked, taking one of the two chairs in the room, “Or, er, Hydra maybe?” 

He tried not to sound too much like he’d kill her if the latter was the answer. 

“Hydra? Isn’t that the Nazi terrorist group, from, what, World War II?”

Steve breathed out a sigh, relieved. As much as he was ready for the possibility, he really didn’t want to be saving a Hydra agent. “Nevermind. You were S.H.I.E.L.D.?”

“Yes. I was in the research division. A little less well-known than some of the anti-terror and security stuff, I guess, but… pretty big. We were pretty big,” she ran a hand over her face, “and a lot sketchier than I thought it was gonna be.” 

“That why they’re after you, now?” Steve prodded, doing his best to keep his voice gentle. 

She shifted, clearly considering whether or not she trusted him, “Wasn’t this supposed to be about you explaining what’s going on to me?” 

“I don’t have the full story. Tell me what happened to you -- I’d bet I could explain it.” 

Carrie ran a hand over her face, staring down at the floor, “Guess if you’re after me, I’m screwed anyways, huh?” 

“Just about,” Steve said, giving her a quick, tight smile. 

“Don’t  _ do  _ that. It’s not as comforting as you think it is,” she said, irritated, but then, after a beat, she started talking anyway. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you liked this chapter! Next up, Steve fights the Winter Soldier. Also, we'll finally leave Steve's POV for a bit. 
> 
> This also passed 100 kudos, which is ridiculously exciting/flattering. Thank you guys so much for reading, commenting, and leaving kudos! <333


	8. hawk & mouse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that I'm adding "Winter Soldier Trauma Umbrella" as a warning for this. It's really not that much worse than anything that happens in canon, but, yeah, this chapter will frequently mention the way that Bucky is treated by Hydra. There is also violence in this chapter.  
> See end notes for more detailed warnings. 
> 
> Ton of comic book science in this, as well. I did, like, two hours of research before writing, which is not enough for anything to be more than semi-accurate, considering my experience with anatomy/medical stuff is entirely veterinary.

Carrie never thought she would be the kind of person to work for the government. She was fast-paced, adaptable, and well versed in cutting-edge technology and technique, not to mention ridiculously bright. She belonged on the front lines of progress -- researching in universities, perhaps, or with companies that dared to challenge the norm. She wasn’t going to get stuck working a dead-end job or spending her days filling out paperwork. 

Then again, S.H.I.E.L.D. was never  _ exactly  _ government, was it? 

They were cutting edge. They offered her more money for research than she was used to --her direct supervisor told her, even, that it was a waste of their time to apply for grants, which was absolutely fucking insane, if you asked her-- and paid quite handsomely too. Their research into musculoskeletal biomechanics, previously classified to her, was decades beyond what she thought possible. 

And there was very little paperwork. 

So little, actually, that she had been surprised. Very often, she’d ask to run something by the ethics committee, or to file a report about something or other, and be told that it was already done by a technician or that she shouldn’t worry about such things. 

The brain, her branch supervisor told her, doesn’t concern itself with the body’s dirty business. Yeah, it does, she’d said, biologically speaking. But she did get what the point was. 

Really, it should have been the first red flag. 

But the work was good. The work was really good.

* * *

 

The soldier squinted out of the windows of the tactical jeep. Unlike the windows up front, this one was tinted both ways, as opaque from the inside as out. Ordinary human eyes, he supposed, wouldn’t be able to see anything beyond the glass at all, other than bright lights or general outlines of things. He doubted they knew exactly how much he could make out. 

He was going straight from one mission to the next and wished, privately, that his equipment had been cleaned better. He didn’t know the words to describe the first one -- the only one that came to mind, really, was “ugly.” It was meant to send a message, that was what it was.

He could still smell it, metallic and slightly sweet, lingering around him. It was making him restless. 

The team had noticed. What’s his fucking face -- codename agent 29, the one with the stupid goddamn haircut,  _ that  _ asshole -- had asked, right before they set out, “Y’all wanna go for a field reset? Doesn’t seem too stable.”

“He’ll be puking the whole way if we do,” pointed out the other guy, 34, long scar on the inside of his hand, the one who played music too fucking loud the whole time he was driving, “I don’t know if you feel like cleaning that up, but I sure don’t, that’s all I’ll tell you. We’ll just give him an extra shot of the green stuff when we get there, it’s fine.” 

That left the soldier feeling relieved, and also like he shouldn’t have been feeling relieved. He had the sense that he shouldn’t have been thinking anything he was thinking at all, but he couldn’t quash any of it.

* * *

 

The work was good enough that Carrie pushed through red flag after red flag. S.H.I.E.L.D. wasn’t exactly the government, but it wasn’t like they would do anything illegal, right? 

There were a lot of ways in which they were distinctly unprofessional, sure. There were a lot of times when people would ask her things that really weren’t her area. There were some weird conversations.

“Settle a bet for us, Eisenhower,” Sarah, one of the technicians from the W division asked her, once, “say a guy’s got a metal prosthetic, and he gets electrocuted on it, right, and--” 

“Gonna have to stop you right there,” she had interrupted, “what kind of metal?” 

Sarah proceeded to lay out a situation far too specific to make any kind of sense in a bet. Far too specific to make any kind of sense, in general.

“Yeah, that’s not gonna fly for an arm,” Carrie replied, when she was finished, “that’s way too heavy, it’d be horrible for the amputee. You’d have to anchor it way further in than normal, like really deep in -- I’d have to mess around with it to be sure how, but it’d definitely damage the whole area. It’d totally offset the poor guy’s balance, too, probably morph his skeleton over time, pull at the skin…  I’d expect constant stretch marks around it.”

“Yeah, exactly!” Sarah said, brightening up, “It’s done like that.”

Carrie stared at her. “Okay, then. Let’s start with, guy doesn’t have that prosthetic. Guy has perfectly reasonable lightweight prosthetic -- let’s say, most of it’s an acrylic blend, right, and we can swap titanium in for the steel you were talking about. Guy gets electrocuted on it. It’s a poor conductor. ‘Wow,’ says guy, ‘I sure am glad my arm is made out of reasonable materials. I’m going to go enjoy my perfectly normal skeleton and clear skin now.’” 

“You’re no fun, Eisenhower,” Sarah had complained. She dropped the line of questioning, though. 

If, later on, Carrie wondered where it had been going, she didn’t dwell on it. Really, she could have gone her whole life without learning the truth of the matter. 

In the end, though, she wasn’t afforded that luxury. 

Half a year later, they wanted her and Jeremy Vinson designing a cool-down system for a mechanized arm. 

“I think they put us on this by mistake,” Carrie told him when she looked over the schematic that was given to her, “this is robotics -- I’m biomedical.” 

Jeremy looked amused, “no, this is biomedical.” 

“They aren’t putting this shit on, like, human people, right? Jerry, I don’t like that look--  _ please  _ tell me we aren’t putting this on actual human people.” 

“Not really ‘actual human people,’ no,” Jeremy said, shaking his head, “seriously, don’t worry about it. I’ve worked on the project before, it’s fine. No one that human is getting hurt.” 

She should have asked, then, what he meant by “that human.” Instead, she nodded and turned back to the schematics, trying to parse them out. The arm, she decided, was an absolute mess, the work of several designers, probably over decades. Some of it was brilliant. Other parts were absolutely atrocious, to the point of seeming sadistic. Not on people, she reminded herself, and turned to Jeremy. 

“Can’t we just keep this stuff here, the locking mechanism, the robotics in the elbow, and the finger design, swap out the hull for a plastic blend, modify the anchoring here, and start from scratch up here, where it could be meeting muscle -- that’s gotta be pinching a nerve. Then, we’d have more space to work with, it’d be overheating less, and--” 

“We’re using this and replacing the fan,” Jeremy said, “there’s a lot at work here. Just do what they said, alright?” 

She should have insisted, she thought later. She should have insisted, tried to push it through. It was a good idea, anyways, design-wise -- more comfortable to wear while also being usable for longer periods of time. But she only thought,  _ not actually people,  _ and drew up the preliminary sketches.

It was only after she left work that day that she remembered the conversation she had with Sarah six months ago. She’d been relieved; she thought maybe they had been betting about using the robotic arm as the prosthetic, not an actual prosthetic someone used. 

She learned the next part of the truth a year afterward.

* * *

 

The soldier’s new assignment was a lot more tolerable. Make it look like an accident, they told him. It could be quick, it could be as quick as he could make it. He wouldn’t give the target any time to scream, or to beg, or to feel the pain. There was a nearby lake where the body would go. 

Make it look like an accident. Make it look like a drowning. 

The target was a small, light thing. Low threat level, though likely to be armed. No real resistance expected. 

Strike during the night, in the motel where the target is staying. Allow no time to scream. Cut off the airflow, get the body in the lake before it’s totally dead, so the lungs have time to fill up with water. Agent 34 will recover Hydra property from the motel room. 

The soldier had never done this mission before. And yet, oddly, he could imagine exactly the way that the target’s neck would feel under his fingers, the way her eyes -- blue -- would widen, the way she would squirm and then not. 

The soldier couldn’t recall ever choking anyone before, and yet he could. He could picture, even, exactly what it would feel like to carry the target’s body (5’0, 105 lbs, female, tiny fucking wisp of a thing) from the motel to the lake. He could picture exactly how long it would take to cut off blood flow to the brain to the point of unconsciousness or brain damage without killing the body itself. 

But he couldn’t remember ever doing it before. And when he looked down at the photograph they had handed him, he realized he got the eye color wrong. 

It was that dissonance that made him feel so uneasy, the soldier thought. He pushed the photograph away, unwilling to look at it any longer, and rapped his metal fingers against the dark glass. 

“What are you rattling around there for?” someone yelled back, “Cut that out, Ringo Starr.” 

He cut it out.

* * *

 

“You had some things to say about the anchoring, remember?” Jeremy had asked Carrie, the morning all of it ended.

“No, no, no  _ way. _ I’m not a surgeon, Jerry, I don’t know why you’re asking me this, I wouldn’t know how to do any of it… Besides, that was ages ago, I don’t remember what I said.” 

“Well, I’ll email you the schematic. Review it. We’ll expect you down there in an hour.” 

Carrie didn’t know why she went, but this time, she could justify it. The anchor points had to be hurting, and that was even before they got damaged. She showed up, told them how they could change it, maybe it wouldn’t be so painful, anymore. 

It wasn’t like she could change much else. 

In college, she had taken her fair share of anatomy classes. She wasn’t a big fan of the dissections; everything from the idea to the smell of formaldehyde left a bad taste in her mouth. She considered herself lucky; twelve years in academia, and she had only witnessed one vivisection. 

It was of a mouse. She had been twenty-one, and it made her cry. 

She’d also seen several surgeries. Later, she would wonder why she remembered the vivisection first when she came downstairs to the surgery room. 

Maybe it was the smell.  Maybe it was the sight of it, how he was laid out, the guy with his shoulder open, the flap of the skin and muscle peeled back and pinned to the table, over the metal arm, which she had only seen in blueprints before; 

He was a big guy, but he didn’t look like it on the table. On the table, he looked pale and sweaty and awfully small. He was young -- at least a five or six years younger than her. Younger than her little brother, she thought, and felt it travel up her arms, raising the hairs. 

And then his eyes, open, turned in her direction. They were wet. It could be anything, she knew, it could be the smell or the light or the drugs, but some irrational part of her insisted that it had to be the pain. He wasn’t all the way out. God, he wasn’t all the way out, and it had to be the pain. 

“I thought you said we weren’t putting it on people,” she said, quietly, not bothering to hide her horror. 

Jeremy reached down, tapping on the poor guy’s head with his knuckles, “he’s not people. It’s hard to explain, just trust me -- this is just a body. Reflexes, a few things programmed in, but no actual person inside. Nothing in here.” 

That wasn’t how any of that worked. Carrie didn’t specialize in anything related to brain and cognitive sciences (and thank  _ God  _ for that) but even she knew that wasn’t how any of that worked. 

“He just looked at me,” she said, still stuck in the doorway. 

“He turns his head sometimes. It’s meaningless.” None-too-gently, Jeremy pulled the guy’s head off to the side by the hair,  “see, he’ll stay here now.” 

“Don’t do that,” said Carrie, sharply, “it’s disrespectful.” 

“Nothing to respect, I’m telling you. You want to get this show on the road?” 

She didn’t. Nonetheless, she walked over, stiffly, and she examined the little metal anchors hooked into the muscle, and she told Jeremy how she would fix them.

That afternoon, she turned in her resignation. The next day, she realized there was no real reason to have her down there. They could have given her a sketch, blueprints, as they had before. They could have described the situation to her. Taken photographs, even. 

No, there was only one reason to have her down there at all; it had been a test. She knew she failed.  

But still, it could have ended there. She could have left, made it clear she was only planning to get the fuck away. She didn’t think they would have come after her.

But she just had to get smart about it.

* * *

 

They gave the soldier a second shot of the green stuff. It went a long way to cure his disequilibrium. The mask, filtering out what he could smell, also helped. 

He watched the target through the window of the motel room. She was alone.

No reason to assume otherwise. Target possessed no knowledge of the incoming attack. 

She was in bed. Lights off, eyes closed, breathing even, too even, counting breaths. Not asleep. 

Easier to strike on sleeping target. Waited twenty-three minutes. Still awake. Enemies of Hydra, it seemed, did not rest easy. No more waiting. 

He opened the window. Target did not stir. No time to waste. He crossed over to the bed with one surge. Her eyes opened a second before he got there, wide and brown, pupils huge with fear, but he clamped his flesh hand over her mouth before she could scream, wrapping the metal hand around her neck. 

She kicked up, frantically, and bit his hand, but it didn’t slow him down. Things were going exactly as planned. He almost didn’t hear the second person behind him. 

Almost.

He just barely ducked, letting go of the target, as the man swung a fist at him. Tall, too tall, too goddamn big, clearly well-trained, holding some kind of large metal plate he was using as a weapon. 

The soldier grabbed his gun from his belt, launching himself at the man. This time, his opponent’s blow with the plate caught him quite hard on the wrist (a  _ crack,  _ pain ricocheting up his arm), forcing him to drop the weapon.  He slammed his fist into the man’s face, kneeing him in the stomach. 

“You don’t have to do this,” the man’s voice came out too fast, breathy, “c’mon, Buck, you know me, don’t--” 

There it was, again. The soldier didn’t know him, and yet he did. 

He socked him in the jaw hard enough to get him to stop talking. He ducked behind the metal plate (shield?) before the second blow could land, and used it to shove the soldier back against the wall. 

“Bucky, you know me, don’t  _ do  _ this,” he pleaded, “I’m Steve, you know me, Bucky--” 

“No, I don’t,” the soldier bit back. He wasn’t supposed to talk on missions. Not to the enemy, he was never supposed to talk to the enemy. But he had to settle the uneasiness rolling in his stomach, push all of it away somehow, “you’re-- irrelevant. Get out of my way.” 

It wasn’t his assignment to kill this man. The soldier was surprised to realize to which extent he didn’t want to. 

Metal bent, broke under the soldier’s arm. He needed the shield out of the way, but it was unyielding in his grip, refusing to give. Fine, then; with a grunt, he yanked it right out of the grip of its owner (Steve?), and slammed its edge hard against his chin, sending him flying backward. 

Get the fuck away. You shouldn’t be here, stupid goddamn punk. 

He tossed the shield off to the side, turning back to find his target. 

But Steve wouldn’t stay down. He pushed himself back up again, surging forward to meet the soldier. “Your name is James Buchanan Barnes. You’re my friend. Bucky, you’re my--” 

It could be like that, then. The soldier hit him again, hard, with the metal arm, feeling ribs crack, and tackled him back, slamming his head hard against the wall. “Bucky--”

“I’m not!” He pulled his arm back to land the next punch. Steve took a deep breath, presumably readying himself for the blow. 

“Fuck,” he said, “I’m so sorry, Buck. Желание.” 

The soldier’s arm fell, delivering the blow to with ridiculous strength, harder than even he thought possible. Steve yelled out in pain in the middle of the second word. 

A shot rang out behind them. Blood splattered on Steve’s shirt. The soldier didn’t get exactly where it hit before he pulled his metal arm back to strike again. Pain bloomed in his shoulder, distant, a signal to be dealt with later. 

Second shot. Steve wasn’t fighting him anymore, so perhaps that one had struck him. 

The soldier swirled around to deal with the target. Not ideal she had a gun. Clearly terrible aim. Her arm was shaking. Shots in succession, messy. Three. Four. Five. Six.

The soldier went _down_.

* * *

 

Carrie’s hand was shaking so hard she had to drop the assassin’s gun. Steve stared at her, eyes wide and face bloody, and then crumpled by the guy’s body, checking the wounds.  The assassin was still moving, using his flesh hand to push impotently at Steve. 

“What the hell did you just do?!” Steve screamed, turning to her as though she had been the one that just beat him to a bloody pulp and tried to choke someone to death. 

She thought she was going to pass out, or scream, or vomit. Instead, she found herself saying, in a voice somehow simultaneously calm and hysterical, “Steve. We need to go. You said he wasn’t alone-- I-- there’s going to be more people, and-- police-- the gunshots--” 

“He’s innocent,” Steve insisted, sounding like he barely heard what she was saying. 

She took a deep breath. In and out. “I know.”

“He’s innocent, he’s  _ hurt,  _ he’s my  _ friend-- _ ” 

“I  _ know. _ Steve, take him, we have to fucking  _ go _ .”  

She thought he wasn’t listening, again. She wondered what the hell she could  _ do _ if he stayed like that, but then he took a deep breath and seemed to pull himself together. 

“Yeah, alright. Take my shield. I’m gonna have my hands full.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas! 
> 
> Detailed warnings: nonconsensual body modification/surgery, WS brainwashing, nonconsensual drug use, non-graphic description of previous murders, descriptions of choking, descriptions of characters fighting each other and getting injured.  
> Violence is about the same as the violence depicted in CA:TWS in severity (ie, punching/kicking/shooting your friends).
> 
> If there is anything else you think I should warn for, please let me know!! I really want this reading experience to be good for everyone.


	9. run

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See endnotes for chapter-specific warnings. Nothing particularly worse than Marvel canon occurs.

Carrie’s car was a scratched up Subaru Legacy. It was silver in color, painted over in splotches off-color grey in several places. Steve knew very little about modern cars, but, if he had to guess, he’d say it was approximately five hundred and four years old. 

“You good to drive?” He asked her when they got down to the parking lot, sirens from police cars already approaching from the distance. 

With a grunt, Carrie heaved his shield into the backseat. 

“Better th-than you,” she said, sliding into the driver’s seat. She put one of Bucky’s guns, which Steve had given her, on the shotgun seat. 

“I’m fine.” Really, he was. His head and ribs ached, and his nose was gushing blood, but he’d done a lot more in far more dire conditions. 

“You’re n-not fucking seeing y-your, y-yourself. An-and you’re holding on. To him.” 

That was a fair point. Steve wasn’t sure what the hell Bucky was thinking; he alternated between violently resisting and allowing himself to be dragged, at one point even slinging his flesh arm over Steve’s shoulders. After Carrie had shot him the first time, he didn’t seem to be using his metal arm nearly as much as he normally did. His flesh wrist was swollen enough Steve would bet it had at least fractured. As beat up as Steve was, he easily had the upper hand, now. 

Which left them here. Steve pulled Bucky, at that point nearly totally unresisting, into the backseat. Carrie pulled out of the parking spot, her hands shaky on the wheel. Her neck was various shades of red,  and she was hiccuping quite loudly, either from the choking session or the stress crying she’d done afterward. Otherwise, though, she seemed surprisingly present. 

“Wh-where to?” She asked, glancing back at Steve.

“The Hydra vehicle,” Steve said, “they’re across the road, parking lot of the shutdown pizza place. Hurry.” 

“You’re f-f-fucking with me.” 

“You think you can outrun them?” 

She was crying again, barely contained hitched sobs, which Steve found he didn’t have the mental energy to deal with, but she turned into the parking lot where Steve directed her. 

“Pass me the gun. The one you didn’t shoot,” he said. She did. Bucky lunged for it, which resulted in a small scuffle, at the end of which Steve was using one knee to hold him down and balancing delicately with the gun sticking out the window. “Okay. Drive about ten feet forward and line up kind of parallel to that car over there. Get ready to duck if they open fire.”

He didn’t see kind of Bluetooth on Bucky, and, as far as he was aware, he hadn’t reported anything to the team when the assassination had not been successful. For something as easy (frankly, almost routine) as this should have been, Steve didn’t think they were monitoring him too closely. 

They weren’t stupid. They knew something was wrong, by then. But Steve counted on them being unprepared to deal with an attack. 

He did the surest damage to the car he could in his first two shots, taking out the front wheels. As he aimed for the third time, a man jumped out of the car, holding a semi-automatic. Steve caught sight of the over-gelled hair and fired on instinct, sending him sprawling by the car. 

“Drive!” He yelled at Carrie. She didn’t need to be told twice. 

He wasn’t entirely sure which direction she went, other than they were on a highway, going somewhere, in two minutes. He tossed gun back upfront and out of Bucky’s sight.

For a few moments, he let himself watch Bucky. When he was shooting, Steve had pushed him, facedown, into the seat. He still hadn’t moved his knee, and Bucky remained here, breaths fast and shallow, skin too warm under Steve’s hands, even through the tactical uniform. But he was breathing, and Steve could-- Steve could fucking  _ cry.  _

He wondered what he was thinking, wondered if the pain and adrenaline were catching up to him, if he was simply biding his time until he would strike again, if he was remembering Steve. 

With his free hand, he pulled back Bucky’s hair, tangled and sweaty, with blood crusted on the ends. He wanted the mask off, too, but he was afraid to poke at him too much. 

“What  _ was  _ that?” Carrie asked, quietly, once they had been on the road for a few minutes. Her hiccups were gone; maybe the fear method worked after all. “In the parking lot.” 

“Hopefully, they’ll get held up by the police, now,” Steve said, “Buys us time. Not a lot.” 

She nodded. “What’s the plan?” 

Steve paused, considering what the priorities were, “Switch cars, get any trackers out of him, get him some kind of first aid, keep moving. Hopefully within the next twenty minutes.”

“Talk about realistic expectations, Rogers,” she said, too shakily for the sentiment to land. 

He didn’t give her his last name, he remembered a moment later. But then again, she wasn’t actually stupid, either, and he supposed his return had been all over the news. 

“Take the next exit,” he said, instead of commenting on that. He glanced at his watch; it was just barely 2 AM. As good a time for car theft as any. 

The exit led them to what looked like an even smaller version of where they had come from. It was a single street, containing a rest area and gas station, one tiny store, and a visitor’s center, probably for tourists too lazy to drive to the town itself.

He had her pull into the parking lot of the small plaza, parking by what looked like a closed down movie theater. 

“Trackers first.” Steve said, “There’s probably something on his clothes or his belt…” 

“It’s in the arm,” Carrie put in, “I saw the blueprints. Didn’t realize exactly what I was looking at, at the time, and I didn’t think it was a tracker, but… it has to be.” 

Steve pushed down a wave of anger (this time, for his companion nearly as much as for Hydra). It wasn’t going to help anything. “Can you take it out?” 

“I can try. The whole thing’s kind of a minefield of bad design layered on top of weird, discordant creative decisions.” 

That didn’t sound good. “Can you, um, take the whole thing off? Hopefully painlessly?” 

“Fuck no! It’s-- well, they had to anchor it really far in. It’s attached to his bones. I’ll look for the trackers. Worst case scenario, I end up breaking something inside it and he can’t use it.” 

Steve sighed. “I’ll take that.” 

She slipped out of the driver’s seat and came around to the back of the car, “Here, can you sit him up? I’ll get my--” 

Suddenly, Bucky shoved Steve back, producing a knife out of seemingly nowhere, and lunged for her. Carrie shrieked, stumbling back. Steve barely managed to wrestle Bucky back into the backseat of the car. The knife ended up stuck deep in the front seat, the tip sticking out. 

“He’s still fucking trying to kill me,” Carrie pointed out, unnecessarily, once she caught her breath, “...I’m not gonna be able to work like this.” 

Steve squeezed his eyes shut for far too long, shaking his head. They barely had fifteen minutes left of the twenty he had allotted. 

If they took longer than a half an hour here, Steve knew Hydra would catch up to them. Stopping at all was pushing it already. Could he, alone, protect Bucky and a civilian from them? If it was only the team that had been with Bucky, perhaps, but they were certain to send others. Choppers, he was sure, within the day. 

“Get back, Carrie,” he called, shutting the door to the backseat. Then he eased back off Bucky, squinting to see what he would do. Nothing. Okay. 

“Hey, pal,” he said, softly, “I’m gonna take your mask off, okay?”

It seemed like a reasonable place to start. Bucky flinched as he reached over. Steve moved slowly, carefully, fully aware of how open he was leaving himself. “Easy, buddy. I’m just going for the straps.” 

For whatever reason, it worked. Slowly, Steve pulled the mask off Bucky’s face, setting it down on the seat next to him. Underneath, Bucky was unshaven. Dirt of some kind clung to his left cheekbone. His jaw was bruised, dark and yellowing around the edges; older than their fight. 

“You got more weapons on you, Buck?” Steve asked, letting his hand fall on top of Bucky’s good shoulder. 

Bucky nodded, just slightly. Steve couldn’t read the expression in his blue eyes. “I’m gonna take your belt,” he said, gently, “and your shoes. That where they are?” 

Steve could feel his hesitation, the subtle way his muscles tensed. Finally, he rasped out, “...sleeve.” 

“Thanks, pal,” Steve said, reaching for his sleeve. He had no illusions about Bucky’s ability to kill without the weapons hidden all over his person, but it still felt almost like trust to be allowed relieve him of them. 

It had to be a calculation on Bucky’s part, Steve thought. He doubted he remembered him well enough to trust him, but perhaps some instinct was telling him surrender wasn’t that bad an option. Or, maybe, he was biding his time. It could easily be that; clearly, the odds were stacked against him at the moment. 

Steve pulled a knife from his sleeve and another four from his boots, a small revolver from his inside pocket, several unidentified metallic balls from his belt, and finally a portable explosive from his right sock. He stacked all of it on the shotgun seat of the car, and turned back to Bucky, “Alright, bud. Now Carrie’s gonna come in here, and you can-- leave her be, okay? Let her touch you. She’s not the target anymore. She’s gonna help.”

Bucky stared at him, uncomprehending, and then hazarded, “...she’s doing repair?” 

“Sure, um. She’s doing repair.” It made Steve a little sick to put it that way, but it seemed to be working. “Just hold still for her, alright?” 

He called Carrie back in. She’d taken her small tool kit from the back of the car while she was waiting, along with what looked like two regular, knobbly sticks from the woods nearby. 

“What’s that for?” Steve asked. 

“The wrist,” she replied, “I think I can whittle them down and use them to splint if you’ve got a knife.”

“Boy, do I ever. The tracker first, though.” 

She nodded and approached hesitantly, clearly ready to start running again if he so much as looked at her wrong. Weirdly, Bucky seemed just cautious of her now as she was of him. 

Carrie climbed into the backseat, so that Bucky was sitting between the two of them. She handed Steve a flashlight, “Hold this steady, on the arm. I gotta warn you, last time I’ve done serious robotics work was undergrad.” 

“You’ve still got the kit,” Steve pointed out. 

“Well, I’m not gonna waste money on a mechanic if something breaks. Doesn’t exactly make me qualified for this.” 

Still, she seemed to have no trouble pushing apart the metal plates of the arm, “I still don’t get what they were thinking with the way they wired the shoulder here,” she commented, absently, “it’s really sturdy stuff.”

“Isn’t that good?” Steve asked, squinting at it. He couldn’t tell much of anything apart. 

“I mean, it’s overkill. Like using an armored tank where an umbrella would do fine. It’s like they -- hold on, back off, you’re blocking my light -- it’s like they were expecting to regularly run electricity through this, or have it heated up ridiculously high, or submerged and frozen, that sort of thing. Way too much.” 

Steve felt sick, again, dizzy with it, but he didn’t say anything. Carrie kept working. For a while, the only sounds in the car were metal clinking against metal and the small group’s uneven breathing. Steve fidgetted. Occasionally, Carrie snapped at him for shifting the light placement. Bucky sat, tense, unmoving, between them. The only thing that betrayed his awareness of the events around him was the way his pupils would dilate, sometimes, when Carrie moved too close or too suddenly. 

“Okay,” She said, finally, using a positively tiny pair of clippers to snip a microscopic wire, “fuck, hope that won’t damage it. I’m gonna get some tape or something on that, and then we’re done.” 

“First aid next,” Steve said, as she pushed the plates of the arm back into place, “He got shot twice, at least. There’s a bullet still in his shoulder.” 

Carrie waved him off, dismissively, “Yeah, I saw that. It’s not bleeding anymore.” 

“We gotta get that out. Any way to sterilize the tweezers you’ve got?”

“What? Steve, what the fuck, no. It’s not bleeding, it’s not moving, we’re leaving it in.” 

“It’s a  _ bullet  _ in his  _ body _ .” 

“It stopped moving. As long as he doesn’t lift his arm too much or pull any stupid shit with that joint, it’s fine. He could live with it for years. But it could be pressed against a ruptured blood vessel; we go in there and tear it out, he could bleed out within the hour.” 

Steve couldn’t argue with that. He swallowed. “Leg. Next one’s in the leg.” 

Carrie took the flashlight from him, ducking down to take a look at it. “Shit, that looks horrible,” she commented, “I don’t know what to do with that.”

“Appreciate the professionalism,” Steve commented, drily.

“Do I look like a goddamn doctor? Fuck, I think we tie something around it, get pressure on it… this is a really complex joint, the knee, Steve, it’s totally fucking smashed right now. This is -- hours of surgery in the best case.” She shook her head, defeatedly, squeezed her eyes shut for a little too long. “Fu-uck me. You got anything sterile?”

He didn't. The closest they had was a freshly-laundered t-shirt from Carrie’s suitcase. She squeezed out huge dollops of hand sanitizer on her hands before she tore it and wrapped it up, tightly. Bucky inhaled, sharply, though his teeth, when the sanitizer touched the wound, and flinched when Steve looked over at him, just barely noticeable.

Carrie started talking again, interrupting Steve’s thoughts, “Okay, I think I… that’s what I can do, now. Honestly, I don’t motherfucking know if we should be using a tourniquet right now. I think most major blood vessels are still intact. I’m just gonna, um, see if the bleeding gets better.” 

She glanced up at him, obviously looking for validation. Steve didn’t know what to tell her; back in his day, they’d slap a tourniquet on it, for sure, but his time fighting with the Avengers taught him that they were used a lot more sparingly now. He shrugged. She looked about to start crying again but persevered regardless. 

Steve tried to piece together what had happened. Carrie had shot the gun six times. The first one, Steve remembered, hit Bucky’s shoulder (at the time, he had thought it bounced off the metal, considering how little reaction it got). The second and the third missed; one of them exploded in the wall right next to Steve’s ear, and the other hit the ground. The sixth hit Bucky’s knee; it was the one that brought him down. 

He didn’t know what happened to the fourth and fifth shots. Between the dark, the layers that Bucky was wearing, and the way the blood from his leg and Steve’s nose seemed to have gone everywhere, it was insanely difficult to tell if there were any more wounds on him. 

“Are you hurt anywhere else?” Steve asked him. He didn’t get an answer. “Hey, Buck. Look at me. Are you hurt anywhere else?” 

Bucky looked at him, shifting uncomfortably. He opened his mouth and then closed it again; Steve couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

“His wrist,” he remembered, after a moment. 

Carrie glanced at her watch, a small electronic thing that glowed harshly in the dark, “Can you set that when we start driving?” She asked.

“Yeah, I should be able to,” Steve said.

“Then let me have a look at you and then we can get moving.” 

“You don’t need a look at me.” 

“Steve, your nose is probably broken. I’d be surprised if your ribs aren’t cracked. Anyone human would be nursing a concussion, too, judging by how hard you went down. Gimme the flashlight.” 

She proceeded to shine it directly in his eyes, making him hiss, “Any nausea? Headache? Trouble balancing--”

“Carrie, back off--” 

“--Irritability?” 

“I’m fine!” He snatched the flashlight back from her, “Keep an eye out. I’m gonna go steal that minivan.” 

“What if he--” 

“Stand outside the car. Shout if something goes wrong.” 

With that, he stormed off for the minivan. It probably wasn’t good, how easily he got in. He felt a little bad when he saw a transformers toy on the back seat, but… well, the car had been sitting out on an abandoned lot in the middle of the night, and it didn’t particularly look like it had been driven recently. It was their best bet, for the time being. 

He pulled the car up to Carrie’s Toyota. “Okay, let’s get everything in here. Should have a bit more space.” 

Carrie, who was standing outside, nodded. “I’ll get the stuff in the trunk, if you wanna handle, um… Bucky?” She sounded uncertain about the name.

“Yeah,” Steve said, giving a short nod. He helped Bucky out, half carrying him now that he knew about the state that his knee was in. He was tense, unyielding in his arms, but he didn’t say anything, didn’t fight. Steve supposed it was a good sign.

“You’re gonna do the arm,” he told Carrie, once they finished loading the car back up. “I’m driving, now.” 

She seemed ready to protest, but then shrugged, shaking her head. “Wipe the blood off your face, first. Some driver’s gonna see you and have a heart attack.”

He did his best. She got into the back of the car, asked him for a knife, and started to smooth out the sticks she’d picked up. Next to her, Bucky stiffened up, just slightly, his eyes fixed on the knife. 

“Hey, that’s okay, she’s not using it on you,” Steve said, turning back to him. It didn’t seem to warrant any reaction other than a raised eyebrow from Carrie. 

Carrie folded the knife, tossing it back onto the shotgun seat of the car, which had somehow become the de facto weapon stash, quickly enough, settling the issue. She tore up another shirt, and pulled a roll of tape from her toolkit for the splint, and waved Bucky over. “Give me your arm. This shouldn’t be too bad.” 

No reaction. Steve sighed, “Give her your arm, Buck, please.” 

Slowly, he did. He seemed to jump every time she touched him, staring her down suspiciously. Carrie kept her eyes down and focused on the arm, clearly on edge herself.

“You sure he’s over trying to kill me?” She asked as she used another shirt to wrap it up and positioned the splints. 

“No idea.” 

“Brilliant.” Carefully, Carrie flipped the tape over so it wouldn’t be touching skin. “...um.  _ That  _ Bucky, can I ask?” 

“That Bucky,” Steve confirmed, drily. 

“Am I gonna wake up if I pinch myself?” 

He shrugged, “Try it out. Didn’t work for me.” 

There was a short lull. Steve could hear her rustling tape behind him but didn’t keep as close an eye anymore, focusing on the road. Now that his adrenaline was gone, Steve could feel his headache and exhaustion in full force. He’d drive for four or five hours, in the opposite direction than they initially fled, he decided. Then, they’d have to stop somewhere and regroup, figure out the next steps. 

Eventually, Carrie finished with Bucky’s arm, grabbed her kit, and crawled over to the shotgun seat, displacing the knife and several guns Steve had piled there. 

“You know, it’s actually easier to kill you if you’re up here,” He pointed out, darkly amused. “If you were thinking about that.”

“Jesus, I thought I’d give him some space, but now I am.” 

Steve smirked, “Happy to do my part.” 

“I’m gonna have to call Pearson, ‘cos I think my fifth-grade history textbook neglected to put ‘huge goddamn asshole,’ under the ‘Captain America’ section.” 

Steve snorted, shaking his head, “You know, I get that a lot.”

This time, the silence felt a lot more comfortable. Steve reached over to fidget with the radio. Carrie slumped over against the window, snoring, the night apparently catching up with her. 

Steve glanced back at Bucky through the rearview mirror. He didn’t meet his eyes, lines of tension visible in his body. Steve ached to help, somehow, to run his hands over the wrinkled forehead, to take him  _ home _ , to get him some real help-- 

“Try to get some rest, huh, pal?” He said, instead, his voice artificially soft. 

Bucky didn’t answer. 

The sun slowly started to rise over the landscape around them. Steve kept driving.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: descriptions of wounds, descriptions of somewhat frantic and incorrect first aid. 
> 
> (they're trying their best, okay? Though it should probably go without saying that "seeing if the bleeding gets better" is not a very good approach to serious wounds. ;) )  
> Another big thank to 3to40characters_nospaces for the beta read.
> 
> As always, thank you for your comments, kudos, and for reading in general! <3


	10. and did you say, I seemed so far away?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaand, here's the chapter I struggled most with. small warning in the end notes.

Steve drove for four or five hours, and then some. He drove through La Junta to Lamar and towards Kansas, towards the east, on instinct. It took him a while to actually start thinking about where they were going, now. 

(“Okay, and then what?” Sam had asked him, several years ago. They had almost been intercepted at a border and had to backtrack. Steve had laid out a brilliant plan. Its one downside had been that it only covered the next half an hour or so. 

Steve had shrugged. “Get there and figure it out.” 

“I’m getting really tired of that being your answer for everything.” 

In Steve’s defense, they did figure it out.)

But now it was time to figure things out. Mentally, Steve laid out the options. 

There was S.H.I.E.L.D., which was a last resort at best. He knew who he could trust -- Natasha, Hill, Carter, Coulson -- but he wouldn’t have any control over who he dealt with. Unless it was a matter of life or death, he wasn’t coming back there. 

There was Tony. Both getting to Tony and convincing Tony to help would be the hard parts. Part of him still wanted to hide the truth from him (effectively, he insisted to himself, Bucky  _ didn’t  _ kill them). But he couldn’t trust that it wouldn’t come out, eventually. 

There was the possibility of trying to hide out until Bucky healed up. Him and Bucky, together, would be a match for most things that could come their way. Between Bucky and Carrie, he’d be able to prove to Hill that S.H.I.E.L.D. was compromised. They might be able to do something about it, even. And he’d been on the run before, hadn’t he? He’d run from things comparable to Hydra. 

_ “Possibly armed, definitely dangerous, and perhaps suffering from mental damages after his time in the ice, folks, we can no longer say that Captain America is coming to the rescue,”  _ Steve hadn’t noticed when the radio station switched from music to the news broadcast. It would have been tactical to listen to the news report, but Steve reached over and turned it off. 

He’d come to a decision. 

Carrie was still conked out in the shotgun seat. In the back, Bucky had his eyes closed. Steve couldn’t tell if he was actually asleep. It was unlikely, when it came down to it, though somewhat more plausible considering the blood loss.

Not wanting to risk waking him, he reached over to tap Carrie’s shoulder and whispered, “Hey.” 

She blinked at him and winced as she straightened up. “Mmph?” 

“I’ve got a plan. We’re gonna have to stay on the run for a bit, but we’re headed back to New York.” 

“And then?” She asked, clearly skeptical. 

“I know people who can help. As soon as we can get it on our terms, I’m going there.” 

“You don’t trust them,” she said, once again pointing out the obvious. 

“It’s S.H.I.E.L.D.” Steve shrugged, “the current Director, she’ll be on our side once she knows what’s going on. But about half the people working for her would be happy to kill both of us and take him back.” 

“Right. Why are we going there, again?” 

“Don’t have a lot of options. Besides, my best friend, she’s S.H.I.E.L.D. I know she’s good.” Steve said, “I know a lot of people there are good.” 

“Why don’t you just call her? Or any of the rest of them?” 

Steve ran a hand over his face, feeling like he’d said too much. “They-- don’t really know me anymore. It’s a long story.” 

He was looking at the road, but he could feel her eyes on him. It didn’t feel good. “...I know it sounds nuts,” he added, with a shrug, “take it or leave it.”

“I guess it’s not that much more nuts than everything I just saw happen,” she allowed, after a moment of thought, “so what now?” 

“I’m gonna pull over somewhere and we’re gonna change, since…” he gestured expansively; she was still in her pajama top and sweatpants, and both of them were pretty much covered in blood from when she had worked on Bucky. “And then we’ll buy food and get gas. That’s as far as I’ve thought this through. Find a scarf or a turtleneck or something to wear.” 

Carrie flipped down her mirror down, taking a look at herself, and winced again. Her neck, by then, was going all kinds of shades of purple, “Yep.” 

Steve pulled over by the emptiest field he could find to change. After, he grabbed a pair of sweatpants and the biggest shirt he could find in his pack (both of which, amusingly, sported the familiar eagle logo) and climbed in the back with Bucky. 

By then, he was awake again. Steve hadn’t expected him to miss all the commotion when they stopped and rearranged things. “Hey, Buck, how’re you feeling? Remember me?”

Slowly, deliberately, Bucky shook his head. Damn, okay.  

Steve held up the clothes he had brought with him, “Thought it would be good for you to change. Gotta be unpleasant, sitting in that crusty old stuff.” 

Bucky didn’t answer, which was kind of par for the course at this point. He did, however, allow Steve to take his jacket and shirt. Steve grimaced when he saw his torso; they’d missed a spot above his hip where the third bullet had hit, a graze that looked like it had only recently stopped bleeding. After a moment of consideration, Steve let it be; with the serum, chances were it would be closing over in a few hours, provided they got some calories into Bucky. 

His knee had stopped bleeding, it seemed, which, according to Carrie, was about as good news as they could expect. Steve wanted to change the bandages, but she stopped him, saying that it was too early and that he’d likely upset blood clotting in the area. 

In sweatpants and Steve’s t-shirt, Bucky looked much more like himself. He didn’t flinch when Steve touched him anymore, even when Steve forgot to warn him about it.

For now, he was going to call that progress. 

“You wanna lie down, back here?” he asked, “You can lie down if you want to. There’s lots of room.” 

That was an upside of having stolen a minivan which Steve hadn’t even been thinking about before. Bucky let himself be coaxed down, and Steve shrugged out of his own jacket to cover him with. He wondered if this was some sort of defense mechanism, going passive the way he was. It made him angry to think about. 

“We’ll get going again, then,” He said, now both to Carrie and Bucky, “though I’ll have to stop for gas soon.” 

He found a good gas station mini-mart combo within a half an hour. Carrie wore his hat and sunglasses inside to buy groceries (“get a lot of water, maybe a juice or something for Buck, for the blood loss, something hot for right now, and, y’know, road trip food, the more calories, the better,” he had instructed her, and she returned with two pizzas, beef jerky, candy, and more kinds of chips than Steve knew by name). 

They couldn’t afford to stop to eat. Carrie took over at the wheel. Steve finished off one pizza by himself. She made an admirable effort with the second one, finishing off just over a fourth.

Bucky, on the other hand, looked nauseous at the greasy smell. He couldn’t seem to stomach much more than a few of the plainest chips, but drank the juice and more water than both of them combined. 

* * *

They switched cars again when Steve thought he identified a search helicopter.  He almost went for another minivan, but it seemed too likely to be reported.

The silence was companionable in its own way, but tense, scared. After the switch, Steve drove again, and he took a gamble, going off the highway and taking increasingly convoluted paths on back roads, where he could be sure they would be free of traffic cams. 

Being cornered on a road like this would have been disastrous. As he drove, Steve made up desperate plans for every scenario,  _ what if they catch up to us? What if it’s STRIKE? What if it’s a chopper? What if we’re captured? _

In the second stolen car, Carrie found a Leonard Cohen CD, which seemed to cheer her up some. Steve hadn’t been familiar with him before to any real extent, but he found he much preferred it to gambling with the radio. 

When they switched cars again, she took it with them. 

They couldn’t afford to stop often. When they did, Steve stocked up on juices and smoothies, which were still about the only things Bucky was up to. It was concerning; Steve thought it must have a side effect of whatever drugs they’d had him on, while Carrie chalked it up to a likely concussion. 

Either way, Steve was giving it two days before he’d start losing his mind. 

They switched cars again. On Steve’s instructions, Carrie took them back onto the highway, and Steve took his first nap since the train. 

It was Bucky that woke him up. Steve thought he dreamed it, at first. Wouldn’t be the first time he had dreamed it-- the way his voice tilted up, like a question, or concerned, something’s wrong,  _ Bucky  _ \-- and for a moment he even saw the battlefield, in his dream, Bucky’s face just a flash before he came undone, before  _ Steve  _ came undone, the smell of the men dying around them and the  _ ashes  _ \-- 

But that hadn’t been his dream at all, before, had it? Steve sat up. His head and neck ached the pain somehow both very far away and right behind his eyes at once. 

“Steve,” Bucky said, again, his voice tilting up, like a question, or concern. 

“What’s up, Buck?” Steve asked, blinking the last remainders of the dream out of his eyes, “Did you need something?” 

It was good, he thought, that he was talking without being prodded, that he was using his name. Maybe, just maybe, it could mean that…

“We’re being tailed,” Bucky said, very certainly, without a hint of emotion in his voice. “The silver Honda has taken the same exit as the past four times. When she took the wrong exit just now and had to turn back, they did the same thing.” 

“Shit, okay,” Steve said, glancing back to find the car he was talking about. It was a small, light thing, passably civilian, but the windows were tinted enough that Steve couldn’t make out the outlines of anything inside. Still, considering the size of the car, there couldn’t be more than four or five people inside. 

“Okay,” Steve said, “I can take that car. I can’t take whatever reinforcements they call. I can’t risk civilians. So here’s the plan: first empty-looking exit, we’re gonna get out. Both of you, stay down -- don’t look at me like that, Buck, you can’t  _ stand--  _ and Carrie, be ready to play getaway driver again. If I get killed or captured, drive like hell. Your best bet is the Stark tower. Explain what happened, and… well, when it comes down to it, Tony’s a good man.”

He didn’t like the idea, but it wasn’t too likely Stark would find out about Howard and Maria for a long time. And, barring Sam, he was the only person that came to mind that wasn’t connected to S.H.I.E.L.D.

Already pale with fright, Carrie pulled the car out on the next exit, driving past an almost empty rest area and to an entirely empty field, close to a dirt road. The little silver car followed them.

Steve reloaded the gun he’d used before, noting how low they were on ammo, and pulled his shield awkwardly out of the back. 

“Remember to duck,” he told his companions, and stepped out of the car. 

The car that had followed them had parked right behind theirs. On closer examination, Steve thought, it looked vaguely familiar. He already raised his arm to shoot the tires, as he had done to the first Hydra vehicle, but some instinct stayed his hand. 

He was glad it did. The door on the passenger side opened, and he recognized the woman stepping out before her feet even touched the ground. 

Natasha had her gun out, pointed neatly towards his center of mass. Her face was impassive and blank. She was ready to shoot, Steve could tell, at a word. 

Hill, her gun also drawn, stepped out from the driver’s side of the car. 

“Put the gun down, Captain Rogers,” Hill called out, in a voice that allowed no room for argument, “Drop the shield. Put your hands behind your head.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning: brief mention of food issues? kind of?
> 
> Let me know what you thought of this chapter! I love love LOVE comments and all of you who read this. <3


	11. what you sow

Steve dropped the shield. He set down the cut, carefully telegraphing his movements. He raised his hands above his head. 

“Director Hill,” he started, not sure how he was going to continue before it was coming out of his mouth, “I, um-- this isn’t what this looks like.” 

“Isn’t it?” Hill asked, drily, “Do you have any other weapons on you, Captain?” 

“A pocket knife, in my back pocket. Listen to me--” 

“Get down on your knees. I’m going to come and get the knife. If you try anything, Captain, Agent Romanova is going to shoot you. Is that clear?” 

Steve sighed, closing his eyes for a second. “It’s clear.” 

Behind him, he could hear the car starting. Of course, he’d told Carrie to run if he got captured, to head to Stark. Smoothly, without even turning all the way, Hill shot out the tires from their car, as he had done to the Hydra jeep. 

“Who’s in the vehicle?” Hill asked as she pulled the pocket knife out.

“They’re not involved in--”

“I didn’t ask what they’re involved in. Who’s in the vehicle?” 

Steve considered his options. It was better, he decided, to answer. “A civilian and, er, my friend. He’s-- I guess he could be dangerous, but he’s hurt pretty badly. No one in there is a threat.” 

“Are they armed?” 

“Shouldn’t be.” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Carrie mouthing something to him through the windshield. His palms still wide open, he gestured to her, a “stay there”/”calm down” kind of sign, hoping she’d pass the message on to Bucky. 

“Are there weapons in the car?” 

“Yeah, some. Carrie doesn’t know how to use most of it, though, and, er, my friend’s too hurt to do anything in a fight.” 

She didn’t look like she completely believed him, and he didn’t blame her -- he didn’t believe himself, either. Still, he could probably count on them to behave until he got this sorted out. 

“Keep in mind that Agent Romanova and I will both shoot at  _ anyone  _ who refuses to cooperate,” Hill warned. 

Steve nodded, tightly. “Understood, Director.” 

She took a step towards him, her eyes still on the car, and seemed to consider the situation. “This probably isn’t the best way to do things,” she said, “but we’re going to take your statement now. I need to know what I’m dealing with.” 

She reached up, fiddling with something attached to the breast pocket of her practical military jacket. It was a small, black little electronic device -- a microphone, Steve realized. Was this an interrogation? 

She had to be waiting for reinforcements; it was unlikely that Hill and Natasha would have come alone (and that Hill was acting as a field agent at all surprised him). Maybe she was trying to understand the situation before others got on scene. 

He had to hurry this along, figure out of some way to explain before the rest of the troops got there; he could trust Nat, and he could trust Hill, but as more people showed up, some of them were bound to be Hydra. 

“Sure, of course,” he said, “whatever you wanna ask me, shoot. Or, don’t  _ shoot _ , please.”

“I’d like to know who I’m talking to, Captain,” Hill said, drily. 

Steve blinked, raising his eyebrows. Okay -- not what he expected. “Sorry, what? What do you mean?” 

“I mean, I want to know who or what you really are, and what your intentions are with us,” Hill said, “Because I don’t think I believe, even for a single second, that you are actually Captain Steve Rogers.”

Steve huffed out an unbelieving laugh, trying to figure out if she was somehow joking. But no. Definitely serious. “To be an honest man, Director, I’m feeling pretty lost right now. You think I’m not me?” 

“Well, if you’d like to know what I think…” Hill’s voice was a little impatient, rattling off the information,  “ _ I _ think you came out of the ice knowing far more than you ever should have. And I think, Captain, that you have been exceptionally sloppy about it. The first time we met, you talked to me about a hostile extraterrestrial entity by name. You should not have known that name.

“You seemed to sense the presence of its control over Barton. When you were talking to Barton, in the aftermath of the attack, you mentioned, by name, both Agent Romanoff, who you should have known nothing about, and Barton’s brother, who you should have also known nothing about.

“Also, here’s some advice, if you’re trying to pass for human; literally no one shakes someone’s hand and says, ‘yes, I have never met you before.’ They didn’t do that in the forties, and they don’t do that now.”  
“Now, wait a minute,” Steve started, “you think I’m not…?”   
“I think,” Hill said, “that Captain Rogers died in the ice in 1945. There’s no way anyone, even enhanced, should have survived 70 years frozen. I don’t know whether you are possessing his body, or if you slipped into the site of the crash some way, or if the whole thing was a fabrication, or, or anything else, really, but I sincerely doubt you are human.”   
“Wow, okay,” Steve said, “that’s… a new one, I’ll give you that.”   
Hill didn’t look impressed.   
“Look, Director. I could tell you the truth. I-- well, I didn’t think you were going to believe the truth, but considering it’s a whole lot less ridiculous than what you just told me, I’m betting there’s a fair chance.”   
“You’ve got ten minutes.” Hill decided. Steve wasn’t sure what would happen after that, if she didn’t believe him, and he didn’t know if she knew, either.  
“I’ll take five. First thing out of the way, I’m Steve Rogers. Or, if I’m not, I don’t think anyone bothered letting me know that. I don’t know how I survived 70 years under the ice, but considering what happened after that, I’m not actually sure I can die, at this point. And yeah, a lot of things happened after that. I’m a time traveler.”   
“Excuse me?”   
“This is my second time waking up in 2012. I knew Loki because I fought him once before. And Clint got brainwashed once before --I was trying to prevent it,-- so I knew a hard hit to the head was going to snap him out. I think that Natasha called it, um, cognitive recalibration, the first time around.

“I know all of you because I worked with you for years. I met Clint’s brother at a Fourth of July party a year from now. He stole my wallet and a compass I particularly cared about. And, well, it’s not really hard to catch on that he and Nat care about each other a whole lot. The rest of it -- well, I guess I’m not a smooth a liar as I thought I was.” 

They were both staring at him, now. Natasha looked fascinated, if a little disturbed, while Hill’s expression was as unreadable as always. 

One of the back doors of the car opened. Clint Barton, looking a little unstable but far better than the last time Steve had seen him, peeked out, “Sounds like Barney to me. We believing him, or what?”

Natasha’s face only barely twitched. She was too professional to take her attention off Steve, but he could tell it was a near thing, “Which part of ‘stay in the car’ is so hard to grasp, Agent Barton?” 

“You said to take notes. No one was saying anything for a while.” 

Hill ignored him, still mulling Steve’s story over. “Who will win the 2013 Super Bowl?”

Steve blinked at her, and tried for several seconds to remember, “Absolutely no clue.” 

“I think we’re believing him.” Maria said, smoothly putting her gun back in its holster, “We’re not believing him around any weapons, but we’re believing him.” 

Natasha also put her gun away, though Steve noticed she kept a hand on it. Clint came all the way out of the car, leaning on the door for support. Well, that was -- easier than Steve thought, actually. Way easier than Steve thought, considering this was Hill. He’d expected to be taken into custody, anyways, was already planning ahead for it. 

“Who’s in the car, then?” Asked Clint, cheerfully. 

“Carrie would have died a few days ago, in the original timeline. Um…” to drop the bombshell or not, “...  _ James  _ would have killed her. But-- it’s not what it sounds like.” 

Hill was already drawing her gun again. Steve lifted his hands, open palms, a universal, ‘it’s okay’ gesture, “No, wait, listen to me. It’s a long story. He, um, he got brainwashed -- a little like Clint, I guess. He’s good now. It’s a long story, but… listen, you know STRIKE?” 

She gave him a well deserved flat stare. Yeah, okay, of course she knew STRIKE. “They would have been the people involved in this. It’s a long story, Director, but SHIELD’s compromised.” 

Hill closed her eyes, for a long moment, took a deep breath.

“I know,” she said, finally, with a tone more mournful than he’d heard from her when Fury died, “And I’m not the director of anything, Steve.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed this one! Let me know what you think in the comments -- I really appreciate them (and you, for reading!).


	12. but i found that the experience was great

Maria Hill was fired early on a Thursday afternoon, in an email. She had to read it twice before it sank in. 

_ “The World Security Council,”  _ the email said,  _ “has voted. While we appreciate the actions you took during a time of crisis, we would like to shift the direction of this organization. As such, effective immediately, you are being terminated from your position as Deputy Director.” _

The severance packet, detailed underneath, was generous. 

Numbly, Maria left the building. Her apartment was within biking distance. She hadn’t been back in several days; with what had happened, she found it was easier to just sleep in the office. The walls were bare. She didn’t know her neighbors. 

Her last three relationships had all ended because she had never picked someone over her job. 

Maria drew herself a bath, as hot as the water could go, and grabbed the bottle of wine Nick had given her for Christmas several years ago. 

By the time Agent Romanova’s call came, she had almost convinced herself that losing the job was a good thing. 

* * *

Clint was still a little annoyed Natasha hadn’t let Captain America come visit. Sure, okay, they were totally suspecting him of something or other, but he really hadn’t been such a bad guy, and Clint doubted he’d do anything to him in the hospital room.

No, really, he’d love a chat with the guy. Unlike Natasha, he didn’t hold any grudges against him -- Clint was a threat, and Cap had neutralized it. The handwritten “get well soon” that Tasha had reluctantly handed over was, frankly, hilarious, and though she absolutely forbid him from eating the chocolate, it looked good. 

It looked better than thinking about anything that had happened, for sure. About the feeling of Loki’s icy hands in his thoughts. About his hands on the gun, sweaty, about the way Fury’s brains had splattered, the distant realization of what he’d done-- 

Nope, okay. Not going there. Funny card, shame Tasha didn’t let Cap stop by, anything but that right now. 

The hospital sucked; there wasn’t much by way of distraction when it made him dizzy to read and the TV was too bright and loud. Tasha had promised to go track down some cards or something after he whined about it to her for a while, but she still hadn’t returned, so Clint busied himself by playing with his jello (yellow, the worst flavor). 

It took him far too long to hear the commotion outside. He wasn’t sure what to blame it on -- it was either the concussion, or he was a terrible spy. Tasha was involved -- he could hear her arguing with multiple men at once. 

Shit, this probably wasn’t good. Clint’s hearing, even with his aids in, had never been his strong suit; he struggled to make the words out through the wall between the hallway and his room. He sat up, ignoring the wave of dizziness, and glanced around for anything he could use as a weapon. 

Downsides of hospitals: no bows or guns allowed. 

Moving slowly only on the basis of the fact that he physically couldn’t move quickly, Clint pulled himself up and out of his bed. For now, he was careful not to pull out the IV in his arm or disconnect the sensors attached to him; he didn’t want to alarm anyone. 

It took about all the energy he had just to stand, leaning against the bed frame, without vomiting. Clint wasn’t entirely sure how he was planning to make his daring escape if it was necessary. 

Other downside of hospitals: normally sick or injured when inside them. Avoid at all costs. 

The door burst open. Clint jumped, stumbling a little, but it was only Natasha. She slammed it back shut with more force than necessary and glared at him, “What are you doing? Lie back down. Who did you piss off this time?” 

“I--” he squinted at her, trying to remember. Nothing, in particular, came to mind. “...no one?” 

“They were talking about taking you into custody. I had to threaten to call Hill.” 

“Who’s ‘they?’” 

“S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. Had the badges to flash at me, anyway.” 

Clint made a face. “I really didn’t do anything. Outside of taking Cap out for--” 

“--I wouldn’t get personal about him right now--” 

“Whatever, outside of taking  _ Rogers  _ out for sushi. Tasha, this has to be about…” 

She sighed, pressed the palm of her hand against her eyes, her forehead. “They know you weren’t you. They know you’re here -- you’re  _ basically  _ in custody. I don’t get this.” 

“You know what I did, Tash…” 

She shook her head, green eyes wide, red curls bouncing around her face, “I know what the action plan was on this one, Clint. I spoke to Hill. I’d bet -- I’m betting Rogers did something, or aliens acted up again. Something must have changed. I’m going to call her again. She can’t do this without explanation.” 

\--

Just before she had left, Hill had been working on a file she had saved as “finalcaprogerstheory6.doc.” She wasn’t obsessed, by any means, but she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t invested in how this played out. Fury had smelled something was off about him the moment he’d come out of the ice, and Maria saw what he’d meant first hand after she’d met the man herself. Something about how he looked at her, at Clint, about the odd, haunted expression when he looked at Fury’s body, the weird way he’d talked. 

She wanted to know what was up with him, who he was, if he was a threat. There were forces at play, here, that very few understood. She was determined not to let herself be caught off guard by them. 

She felt she should assume the worst; anything so blatantly deceptive should be a threat. Still, there was some weird part of the guy that came off as so earnestly caring that it threw her off balance. 

When Agent Romanova described the situation to her, Maria only had one thought: Rogers had done something. 

She logged into her S.H.I.E.L.D. account. Technically, she probably shouldn’t have. But -- well, she hadn’t been locked out, yet. Formally, she was an employee until midnight. She thought she’d take a minute to organize Rogers’s file; she’d been expecting to do it that evening. Now, whoever was dealing with the case would have to sort through her half-finished notes. 

And she would have sorted the file out and logged back out. But they’d gotten sloppy, unbelievably sloppy, and left a note at the bottom of the file. Maria read through it several times.  _ What asset?  _ she thought,  _ Who’s Dr. Eisenhower?  _

She couldn’t stop clicking after that. Nick’s override worked for about ten percent of it -- the rest, she had to infer. 

It didn’t look good. By the time they locked her out, at eight PM that night, she had gotten enough. She called Agent Romanova back. Don’t trust S.H.I.E.L.D., she told her, get Agent Barton out of there. 

“I’m going to do a little investigating on my own,” she said and grinned when Romanova told her she was coming with. 

What she wasn’t anticipating was Barton. 

* * *

“I spy with my little eye, something white,” Clint said, cheerfully. He could see the way the line the line of Natasha’s shoulders deflated in the seat in front of him, exaggerated annoyance.

“I don’t know,” said Hill, “the one cloud that’s too small for either of us to see.” 

“Seagull, four thousand miles away,” Tasha suggested, drily. 

“A cheese stick someone was eating in Philly,” Hill put in. They’d passed Pennsylvania hours and hours ago. 

“You’re so boring,” Clint said, “it’s just the whites of the eyes of the motorcyclist without a helmet.” 

“Oh,  _ just  _ that, huh?” Tasha asked, “Oh, man, why didn’t we play this in good faith? If it’s just that.” 

Clint rolled his eyes, returning to staring out the window. Hill’s phone buzzed, and she nodded to Tasha, who opened it. “Rogers started moving again,” she reported. 

“Yeah, that’s what I thought he’d do,” Hill said, “interesting that he didn’t notice the bug on the shield, since he immediately found yours. It wasn’t in any official records -- Nick wanted me to keep it off the books. That’s the only thing.”

“He makes me uncomfortable,” Natasha said, staring straight ahead.

Clint had seen it in the way she carried herself after their conversation at the hospital. Natasha hated things she couldn’t predict, people she couldn’t manipulate. He let the car lapse back into silence again, let her get over herself. 

They caught up with Rogers several hours after that. 

* * *

“Who’s the director?” Was the first thing out of Rogers’s mouth, once they’d laid all the facts out on the table, “Wait, does this mean Fury--”

Hill shook her head, “Fury’s dead, Captain. Jasper Sitwell has assumed the position.” 

Rogers went white as a sheet, his eyes widening. “That’s not  _ good,”  _ he said, which, yeah, no duh, Clint wouldn’t have needed future foresight to figure that one out. 

“Yes, I’m not happy about this either. I think there are things going on in S.H.I.E.L.D. we weren’t aware of,” Hill said, giving him a grave nod, “Not even Nick, maybe.” 

“No, you don’t  _ get  _ it,” Rogers said, “S.H.I.E.L.D.’s infiltrated. And with the way things are looking, now -- well. They’re basically Hydra, now.” 

“Isn’t that the terrorist group, from, like, your time?” Clint piped up, glancing at Natasha and then at Hill to make sure he’d heard correctly. 

Rogers sighed, shaking his head, “This one’s gonna be a long story. Can six people fit in your car, Hill?” 

Hill frowned, glancing back, “We’ll make it work.”  
“Then, there’s someone I think you have to meet,” Rogers made his way back over to his car, pulling the back door open. 

“Черт!” Natasha immediately had her gun drawn, again, “Get back,  _ Clint _ , Hill, that’s the Winter Soldier.” 

“No, it’s okay,” Steve threw himself in front of the doors. At the same time, the man inside, who Clint couldn't get a good look at, surged forward. Clint caught a glimpse of metal -- he was armed. 

Natasha did what any trained agent would do in the situation. The sound of the shot made Clint’s hearing aids crackle unpleasantly. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> woop, this one was late and I apologize. Real life got kind of tough for a while. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this, and we should be back to the normal schedule after this one! :)


	13. into the frying pan

Later, Steve wouldn’t be sure exactly how it happened. At the moment, it was a series of impressions:

Natasha, her face perfectly, neutrally set, shot the gun as soon as Bucky started moving towards her.

Steve caught the bullet first, sending blood splattering back into their stolen car. Pain bloomed in his ribs.

Carrie screamed.

Bucky had the gun out of Natasha’s hands before she could do much more, and leaned back to throw a punch.

Clint was rushing forward, Hill was rushing forward. Natasha kicked at Bucky’s wounded knee.

Steve, finally, got a hold of himself, grabbed onto Bucky’s good shoulder, yanking him back. “Get off her!” He yelled, “Don’t touch him! Stop it, everyone.”

Bucky stopped. Reclaiming her gun, so did Natasha, a careful, calculating peace.

Bucky reached over, slowly, haltingly, to put a metal hand on Steve’s shoulder, a steady, careful weight. Automatically, Steve reached up to cover it with his own. Bucky wouldn’t meet his eyes when Steve glanced over; his gaze was fixed on the bullet hole in Steve’s ribs.

Yeah, fair enough.

“Sorry, to, um, interrupt whatever’s happening here,” said Clint, “it looks really profound, and everything, but, um. Still here, guys.”

He gestured, widely, at Hill and Natasha. He was the only one of them not have his gun drawn, but Steve could see a throwing knife in his sleeve.

“We’re all on the same side, here,” Steve said, “This is… sure, he’s the Winter Soldier, but he got brainwashed, alright? He’s as much a victim of this as we are. And, um, he’s Bucky Barnes.”

Three blank stares. Natasha looked about to reach over and pinch herself. Hill’s feathers were clearly ruffled.

Clint pulled out a smartphone from his pocket, looking something up or texting someone, maybe. He glanced at the screen, then at Bucky, then back at the screen again, “Oh, I can totally see that.”

“Clint,” said Natasha, her voice flat.

“No, seriously, take a look,” he said, holding up his phone. She sighed, clearly not wanting to be distracted, but then stepped over and looked anyway.

“Woah.”

Hill lifted an eyebrow, “Don’t tell me you two believe that?”

“I don’t,” Natasha said, but Steve could tell she was uncertain.

“It just really looks like him,” Clint put in, at the same time.

“You’re going to have to explain the _hell_ out of that one,” Hill said, turning to Steve, “because, right now, if I didn’t know better, I’d think this was some kind of bizarre dream. Simulation, maybe.”

“Okay,” Steve said. He glanced over at Bucky, noting the way he was leaning against the car -- even with a super healing factor, there was no way he should have been standing on that knee. “There’s choppers after us, though. We can’t afford to be here this long. We need to get going, and I’ll talk. Please just-- trust me.”

Hill’s eyes were unmoved, unreadable for a few long moments. Finally, she gave a short, unhappy nod. “... If you cross me on this.”

“I understand.” Bucky’s hand, cold and metal, gave his wrist a warning squeeze. “...Also, I should probably get some pressure or something on this, because, er…”

Bucky seemed placated. Steve gestured down at his ribs, which, yeah. Yeah, okay, this was really painful. His clean shirt was now stained with blood again. He was getting real tired of that.

Hill strode forward, yanking his shirt up (Bucky’s hand tightened on his wrist, again, which sent a pleasant hum through Steve). “It’s a graze,” she declared, “the bullet left. You’ll live. We’re all getting in my car, deal with it there.”

It didn’t feel like a graze. Steve didn’t feel like arguing.

He made Bucky sit down when they started transferring their things over, and introduced a sheepish, clearly terrified Carrie to the rest of the group.

They pulled only the essentials over -- just one of Carrie’s two bags, Steve’s duffle, and some of Bucky’s weapons. Clint, who seemed to be the only one of the three agents even close to relaxed around them (an act, Steve was sure), found their cold pizza leftovers and started munching away, watching the procedures with some amusement.

Natasha cuffed him on the head, very very lightly, as she passed.

Then, of course, came the time to actually cram people inside the car. Clint got in the back first. Carefully, Natasha sat on halfway top of him, which neither of them seemed to mind (“If you lick the back of my neck,” Natasha whispered, too quietly for non-enhanced ears to catch, “I will end you.”). Steve rolled his shield in front of them and took the middle seat. Bucky sat next to him. Hill drove, and Carrie sat shotgun.

Strategically, it made sense. They wanted someone capable in the back (and Steve was under no illusions -- if shit hit the fan, both Clint and Nat would be capable of doing a whole lot of damage), they didn’t want to give Steve and Bucky easy access to the driver, and, in terms of vigilance, the shotgun seat was the worst one.

“Everyone buckled in?” Hill asked, drily.

“Where are we going?” Steve asked, once they got going, through gritted teeth; Bucky was putting pressure on his wound really, really enthusiastically.

“Back towards New York,” Hill said, “there’s a safe house in Indiana where I want to stop. We need to stop, refuel, rethink our plans.”

“Are you sure that’s wise?” Steve asked, “They’ll probably notice that…”

“Only five people should know about its existence,” She assured him, “Out of them, three are dead, one is me, and the final one… shouldn’t be compromised.”

Steve rubbed at the bridge of his nose, “Give me a name.”

“Phil Coulson.”

“Probably safe,” he conceded.

“Probably?”

“He died before this whole thing blew up, the first time around,” Steve said, “but everything I know about him says he’s not a mole.”

“I think you’re going to have to start telling that story sooner than later,” Hill said, drily.

And so Steve did. He talked for a long time. Occasionally, he had to hiss when Bucky shifted his hands, or Hill would ask a pointed question, or Clint let out a low whistle, but mostly he went uninterrupted.

It took a long time to get them caught up. Some parts, especially the ones that happened in space, Steve wasn’t clear about himself. Some parts, like Wanda’s powers, seemed normal to him but totally unimaginable to his companions. Sometimes, Steve found himself getting emotional.

Bucky was the only one in the car who didn’t speak once during the story. Steve knew he was listening, though, by the way his hands tightened and loosened against Steve’s flesh. The way that he caught Steve’s wrist, once, and held it for a while before letting go. It felt… oddly intimate, though Steve knew he must be projecting.

It didn’t feel cramped. If anything, for once, Steve felt didn’t feel alone.

They arrived at the safe house just after sundown. Hill went in first, gun drawn, and then came back for the rest of them.

It was bare but much nicer than sleeping in the car. Hill pulled ten cans of beans out of the cupboard, along with noodles of some kind and a jar of peanut butter, and, together with Clint, prepared something that vaguely resembled food.

Sitting on the ratty fold out couch, Steve ate his share and half the jar and answered countless questions about the future from Clint and Carrie. Natasha watched them suspiciously, though the corners of her mouth definitely quirked up a few times at Clint’s jokes. Hill perched on top of one of the armchairs and took notes by hand.

Bucky seemed happy to be anywhere, as long as it didn’t involve leaving Steve’s side. He still didn’t speak (hadn’t said a word since he had warned Steve about their tail), and couldn’t be coaxed to eat more than a few spoonfuls of peanut butter.

Still, Steve was going to count that as an improvement.

They decided to turn in early, and that was when the problems started. There were two main rooms in the safehouse; one bedroom, and combined living room kitchen space. The bedroom contained a bunk bed with two mattresses. The living room had the couch.

“C’mon, bed buddy,” Hill said, tapping Carrie on the shoulder, and gestured to it, “We’re here.”

It was obvious; she wanted to guard the entrance, and didn’t trust Steve and Bucky on their own, wanted them in the room with her two best fighters.

Steve helped Bucky to the bedroom, not wanting him stepping too much on his bad knee. Natasha glared at them from the top bunk (which had far less effect with Clint already asleep and octopused around her but certainly would have been very intimidating otherwise).

“I’ll take the floor,” Steve said.

“You’re.” Bucky took a long pause between words, suddenly quiet, shy -- nothing like his assertive words in the car, “Shot.”

“You too.” Steve pointed out, gesturing down at his knee.

Bucky just stared at him.

“Yeah,” said Steve, “okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in some universe, this probably counts as fluff. let me know what you think in the comments! I love getting them all and re-read them countless times before I reply.


End file.
